遲來的時間或被壓抑的空間?:晚清上海的城市現代性及偵探空間想像, 1860s-1910s
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2010
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中譯福爾摩斯偵探故事於1896年首次在維新派文人梁啟超所辦之《時務報》上連載,並成為以科學邏輯啟蒙大眾的文化工具。作為一迥異於傳統公案小說的新犯罪文學,福爾摩斯偵探故事旋即在中國讀者間掀起一連串閱讀、翻譯與模仿的風潮。多數研究者多從翻譯引介之後的「影響」面向爬梳西方偵探文類在中文世界的傳播、模仿及其連帶社會意涵,卻未更深入探討此影響發生前接受環境本身所可能蘊含的偵探元素。本研究企圖另闢蹊徑,將研究焦點放在十九世紀中末葉上海文人城市書寫所呈現的「類偵探」隱喻及其中所透露的另類現代性。以福爾摩斯偵探小說為英文參照文本,本研究選取若干晚清上海文人書寫的城市雜記、新聞報刊、小報畫刊、詩詞及連載小說,並探討其中曖昧的敘事張力及空間游移。透過列斐伏爾的「再現空間」(representational space)、詹明信的「認知繪圖」(cognitive mapping) 以及托多洛夫之偵探敘事學等理論視野,本文試圖探問:在十九世紀中末的上海都會空間裡,面對物質和文化環境的劇烈變化,城市中的文人是否已逐漸醞釀一種前現代的「偵探式」觀看美學。
本論文第一章從理論層次探討偵探敘事當中所蘊含的雙向游移及中介,並進一步將此敘事邏輯連結到「再現空間」與「認知繪圖」中所暗示的美學潛能。依循此內在空間邏輯,晚清上海文人在面對現代空間均質化與標準化的壓迫時,亦從現代性內在結構中折射出一隱而未現的「差異空間」(differential space),而此游移中介空間即本文所聚焦的偵探式再現空間。第二章探討上海文人書寫中所呈現的「幻影」及「群眾」,藉此彰顯文人面對都會奇景的觀看模式和置身無名大眾的恐慌。第三章從上海的現代交通動線及建築空間出發,描繪城市文人從租界規劃邏輯中所投射出的雙向窺探與捕捉意圖。第四章從十九世紀新興的醫療空間及自然史演化論述,討論偵探敘事中隱含「啟蒙身體/墮落身體」的曖昧雙重性,並對照晚清譴責小說中自我解構的另類身體空間/時間想像。 上海文人不斷逡巡於現代與前現代之間、在場與不在場之間、未來與過去之間、群體與個人之間,而其再現與觀看之模式亦隱約暗示了現代偵探發生的潛在契機。
This thesis probes into the condition of possibility behind the introduction and reception of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in China during the late nineteenth century. While previous scholarship points out that the translated genre could have served as the edifying tool for the Chinese reformist elites to propagate their utilitarian agenda by circulating ideas of the West, it remains far from satisfactory to regard the genre’s immediate popularity simply as China’s wholehearted embrace of the Western modernity. Questioning a belated Chinese literary modernity, I propose an alternative historiography by arguing that a detective aesthetics might have been articulated by the urban literati in Shanghai at the outset of the city’s modernization. Informed by Henri Lefebvre’s “representational space,” Frederic Jameson’s “cognitive mapping,” and Tzvetan Todorov’s detective typology, I thus embark upon a comparative reading of a cluster of cultural texts produced by Shanghai’s urban literati and several Sherlockian detective fictions. Focusing on the narratological, spatial, and social intermediation between absence and presence, between known and unknown, between enlightened and degenerated, the study explores the urban literati’s detective tropes from the following aspects: Chapter Two introduces the tropes of phantasmagoria and incognito, the fundamental visual duality between absence and presence; Chapter Three deals with the “mnemonic” traffic mapping between transience and immutability, the interiorizing/exteriorizing of architectural façade, and their relationship with an emerging detective voyeurism; Chapter Four relates modern detective narratives to an alternative corporal imagination in connection with a social-Darwinist evolutionary temporality. Problemtizing the “foreign” influence upon the Chinese literary creation, the thesis offers not only a chance to reconsider the Chinese literary modernity but the possibility to remap the Western genre’s presupposed cultural boundaries.
This thesis probes into the condition of possibility behind the introduction and reception of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories in China during the late nineteenth century. While previous scholarship points out that the translated genre could have served as the edifying tool for the Chinese reformist elites to propagate their utilitarian agenda by circulating ideas of the West, it remains far from satisfactory to regard the genre’s immediate popularity simply as China’s wholehearted embrace of the Western modernity. Questioning a belated Chinese literary modernity, I propose an alternative historiography by arguing that a detective aesthetics might have been articulated by the urban literati in Shanghai at the outset of the city’s modernization. Informed by Henri Lefebvre’s “representational space,” Frederic Jameson’s “cognitive mapping,” and Tzvetan Todorov’s detective typology, I thus embark upon a comparative reading of a cluster of cultural texts produced by Shanghai’s urban literati and several Sherlockian detective fictions. Focusing on the narratological, spatial, and social intermediation between absence and presence, between known and unknown, between enlightened and degenerated, the study explores the urban literati’s detective tropes from the following aspects: Chapter Two introduces the tropes of phantasmagoria and incognito, the fundamental visual duality between absence and presence; Chapter Three deals with the “mnemonic” traffic mapping between transience and immutability, the interiorizing/exteriorizing of architectural façade, and their relationship with an emerging detective voyeurism; Chapter Four relates modern detective narratives to an alternative corporal imagination in connection with a social-Darwinist evolutionary temporality. Problemtizing the “foreign” influence upon the Chinese literary creation, the thesis offers not only a chance to reconsider the Chinese literary modernity but the possibility to remap the Western genre’s presupposed cultural boundaries.
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偵探敘事, 現代性, 城市空間, 再現空間, 福爾摩斯, 上海文人, detective narrative, modernity, urban space, representational space, Sherlock Holmes, Shanghai literati