民间叙事论纲(上)

民间叙事是指生活于社会底层的老百姓的口头叙述活动 ,主要指他们的艺术叙事。口头性是其基本特征 ,与此相关则有易变、易散失、往往无主名、在流传中发生增删而形成地域性和历史性异文、形式生动活泼、内容反映民众心理、民众思想和趣味、真实反映与自由想象相混杂 ,以及与主流文化既矛盾又统一等特点。民间叙事首先大量地存在于民间文学作品中 ,其次是寄居在文人叙事的文本中。文人的介入使民间叙事经历了一个文本化的过程 ,使民间叙事渐渐从活态的口化之物固化为书面文字。而官方的介入则进一步使某些文本变成了经典。文本 ,包括被经典化了的文本 ,又可以成为民间叙事的新源头 ,成为新的民间叙事的依据 ,即所谓“反哺”。

Compendium of Folk Narration

Folk narration refers to the oral narrative activities, of common people living in the bottom of the society, mainly their artistic narration. Along with the basic character of oral forms, they have the characters of flexibility, vaporization, anonymous having regional and historical texts by deletion, vivid forms and contents which cater for the public mentality, thoughts and interests, combining real facts with fantasy, as well as contradicting and compromising main stream of culture. Folk narration exists not only in the folk tales, but also in the literary texts by the letters, which reinforce the oral forms into the written forms and then into the classics. The classic texts become the new source of folk narration, which is considered as the foundation of it.