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

记忆碑记：论《观锥编》的文史研究（有限观点）

• 批准号: 2435140
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Oxford
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2435140
• 关键词: Tablets; Memory; Towards; Literary; Historical

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.

自1978年出版以来，钱钟书（1910-1998）的《观瞻编》（GZB）一直被誉为文学生涯的最高成就，产生了一些现代中国最具原创性的小说、散文和文学批评。尽管西方和中国的学者都对钱其琛这部被广泛阅读和大量翻译的小说《围城》进行了详细的研究，但他们对这部范围如此之广、形式如此之奇怪、以至于无法逃脱所有可能的定义的学术著作更为犹豫。也有一些值得注意的例外;罗纳德埃根（1999）、莫妮卡·莫奇（1994）和蒂齐安娜·廖伊（2014）都努力向更广泛的西方受众介绍钱学森的学术。虽然多产，中国语言的研究主要局限于研究特定时期的中国文学史和哲学在钱的见解，很少停留在考虑更广泛的影响，GZB中国文学作为一个整体，或其组成的离散影响。正如张龙溪所写的，到目前为止，很少有人对钱学森的学术进行批判性的评价，给予它应有的赞誉和赞赏。“（2013）我的首要研究问题将寻求解决我们知识中普遍承认的这一差距。首先，我对GZB告诉我们的关于中国和世界文学的内容不感兴趣，而是为什么这部学术著作应该采取如此独特和难以捉摸的形式。附属问题包括但不限于，原始手稿是如何组成的，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他后来的作品影响最大？我的研究方法分为三大类。第一次是对钱学森的个人档案进行前所未有的审查，这些档案最近才由上海商务印书馆（2018年）全文出版。这78卷传真几乎包含了钱学森从1935年到牛津大学埃克塞特学院到1998年去世前不久的所有手写和打字的阅读笔记。我将尝试第一次分析钱学森在创作《广之声》时是如何从他的笔记海洋中汲取灵感的。通过对钱学森私人阅读的全面记录，我也希望构建一部关于钱学森内心生活的传记，并探讨它如何与他的代表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，如何塑造他的努力，以GZB的形式打造文化记忆。第二类是双重的：信件和机构研究。虽然是一个私人的人，钱是一个令人敬畏的记者，并保持书信往来与许多著名的学者和作家，中国和外国。然而，这些信件还有待深入研究。通过收集分散在钱学森传记工具中的所有信件，并呼吁他在中国、欧洲和美国的前联系人提供更多材料，我希望能对他的生活和学术有新的了解。我在牛津大学的机构研究将集中在20世纪30年代中期的英语系和埃克塞特学院，钱学森在那里获得了他的学士学位。他获得了学位，并建立了许多兴趣，这些兴趣将融入他后来的小说和学术。第三类也是最后一类是比较性的。在钱学森学术的世界主义精神中，我的目标是评估GZB的定义方面（即折衷主义，多语言）是否可以在其他面临类似不稳定环境的主要作家的作品中找到，或者承担着保护垂死文学的责任。首先，我打算考察诸如沃尔特·罗利爵士和埃兹拉·磅等作家对启蒙学习的存在主义冲动。