Tablets of Memory: Towards a Literary and Historical Study of Guanzhui Bian (Limited Views)

自1978年出版以来，钱钟书(1910-1998年)的《关注扁》一直被誉为他文学生涯的最高成就，他创作了现代中国一些最具原创性的小说、散文和文学评论。尽管西方和中国的学者都对钱学森被大量阅读和翻译的小说《围城》写了大量的文章，但他们对一部范围如此之广、形式如此奇特、以至于无法给出所有可以想象的定义的学术著作感到更加犹豫。也有一些值得注意的例外；罗纳德·伊根(Ronald Egan)(1999)、莫妮卡·莫奇(Monika Motsch)(1994)和蒂齐亚娜·廖伊(Tiziana Lioi)(2014)都努力将钱学森的学术介绍给更广泛的西方观众。虽然汉语学术成果较多，但很大程度上局限于根据钱学森的见解来考察中国文学史和哲学的特定时期，很少考虑《广州志》对中国文学整体的更广泛影响，或对其构成的个别影响。正如张龙熙所写，到目前为止，几乎没有人对钱学森的学术做出批判性的评估，以给予它应有的赞扬和赞赏。“(2013)我的首要研究问题将寻求解决我们知识中这一公认的差距。首先，我不是对GZB告诉我们关于中国和世界文学的东西感兴趣，而是对为什么这部百科全书般的学术著作会呈现出如此独特和难以捉摸的形式感兴趣。次要问题包括但不限于，原稿是如何组成的，它是如何演变的？哪些人和机构(最著名的是牛津大学)对钱学森的文学发展和后来的作品影响最大？我的研究方法大致分为三大类。第一次是史无前例地回顾钱学森的个人档案，这些档案最近才由上海商务印书馆(2018)全文出版。这78卷传真件几乎包含了钱学森从1935年来到牛津埃克塞特学院到1998年去世前不久手写和打印的阅读笔记。我将尝试第一次分析钱学森在创作GZB时是如何从他的音符海洋中汲取灵感的。通过对钱学森私人阅读的全面记录，我还旨在构建一本钱学森内心生活的传记，并探索它如何与他的杰作的精神和细节产生共鸣。在这样做的过程中，我最感兴趣的是钱的私人记忆，以他的笔记的形式，如何塑造了他以GZB的形式打造文化记忆的努力。第二类是双重的：书信和机构研究。尽管钱学森是一个不为人知的人，但他是一位令人敬畏的通讯员，并与许多著名的中外学者和作家保持着书信关系。然而，这些信件尚未得到深入研究。通过收集散布在钱学森传记用具中的所有信件，并呼吁他在欧洲和美国的前联系人中国提供额外的材料，我希望对他的生平和学术有新的了解。我在牛津大学的机构研究将集中在20世纪30年代中期的英国学院和埃克塞特学院，钱学森就是在那里获得理学士学位的。他获得了学位，并建立了许多兴趣爱好，这些兴趣后来融入了他后来的小说和学术研究。第三类也是最后一类在性质上是比较的。本着钱学森学术的世界性精神，我的目标是评估GZB的定义方面(即折衷主义、多语种)是否可以在其他面临类似危险情况的主要作家的作品中找到，或者承担起保护濒临死亡的文学的责任。首先，我打算考察沃尔特·罗利爵士和埃兹拉·庞德等作家对百科全书式学习的存在主义冲动。

Ever since its publication in 1978, Qian Zhongshu's (1910-1998) Guanzhui bian (GZB) has been hailed as the crowning achievement of a literary career that produced some of modern China's most original fiction, essays and literary criticism. While both Western and Chinese scholars have written at length on Qian's much read and copiously translated novel, Fortress Besieged, they have been more hesitant to approach a work of scholarship that appears so broad in scope and strange in form as to escape all conceivable definitions. There are some notable exceptions; Ronald Egan (1999), Monika Motsch (1994) and Tiziana Lioi (2014) have all laboured to introduce Qian's scholarship to a broader Western audience. Although more prolific, Chinese language scholarship has largely confined itself to examining specific periods of Chinese literary history and philosophy in the light of Qian's insights, and rarely tarries to consider the broader implications of GZB for Chinese literature as a whole, or the discrete influences on its composition. As Zhang Longxi writes, so far there has been very little critical assessment of Qian's scholarship to give it the credit and appreciation it deserves." (2013)My overarching research question will seek to address this commonly acknowledged gap in our knowledge. Primarily, I am less interested in what GZB tells us about Chinese and world literature than in why this encyclopaedic work of scholarship should have assumed such a unique and elusive form. Subsidiary questions include, but are not limited to, how was the original manuscript composed and how did it evolve? What people and institutions (most notably Oxford University) had the greatest influence on Qian's literary development and his later work? etc. My research methods fall into three broad categories. The first entails an unprecedented review Qian's personal archives, which have only recently been published in full by Shanghai Commercial Press (2018). These 78 volumes of facsimiles contain nearly all of Qian's hand written and typed reading notes from the time he arrived in Exeter College Oxford in 1935 until shortly before his death in 1998. I will attempt the first ever analysis of how Qian drew from his sea of notes when composing GZB. With a comprehensive record of his private reading, I also aim to construct a biography of Qian's inner life, and explore how it resonates with the spirit and particulars of his magnum opus. In doing so, I am most interested in how Qian's private memories, in the form of his notes, shaped his efforts to forge cultural memory, in the form of GZB. The second category is twofold: letters and institutional research. Though a private man, Qian was a formidable correspondent and maintained epistolary relations with many notable scholars and writers, both Chinese and foreign. These letters, however, have yet to be examined in any depth. By collecting all of the correspondence scattered throughout Qian's biographical paraphernalia and appealing to his former contacts in China, Europe and America for additional materials, I hope to throw new light on his life and scholarship. My institutional research at Oxford University will focus on the English Faculty and Exeter College during the mid 1930s, where Qian took his B.Litt. degree and established many of the interests that would feed into his later fiction and scholarship. The third and final category is comparative in nature. In the cosmopolitan spirit of Qian's scholarship, I aim to assess whether the defining aspects of GZB (i.e. eclecticism, multilingualism) can be identified in the work of other major writers faced with similarly precarious circumstances, or with the responsibility of preserving a dying literature. In the first instance, I intend to examine the existential impulse for encyclopaedic learning in writers such as Sir Walter Raleigh and Ezra Pound.