胡适的民间文学理论与实践

在百年中国民间文艺学史上,胡适是民间文学的文学研究派的代表人物。他是"双重的文学"、"比较研究法"、"母题研究"等民间文学研究理念的始作俑者和实践者。他支持顾颉刚的古史辨伪,认定古史传说的嬗变无非是由简单变复杂、由地方性变全国性、由神话变史实、由寓言变事实四种途径,并将其研究方法概括为"历史演进法"。他是我国学术史上提出"箭垛式人物"及"滚雪球"式的变迁规律这两个传说学理论的第一人,为中国传说学的建构奠定了初步基础。《歌谣》周刊停刊,歌谣研究会的学者们风流云散逾十年后,他再度复刊《歌谣》周刊,宣称"我们现在做这种整理流传歌谣的事业,为的是要给中国新文学开辟一块新的园地",并发布全国歌谣普查建议书,因而与南方民俗学派的思潮遥相对峙。

The Theory and Practice of Hu Shi's Folk Litarature

In the history of century-old Chinese folk art and literature,Hu shi was a lead- ing figure in the school of literal research on folk literature.He was the one who first en- visioned a set of conceptions in folk literal research such as"double literature","compar- ative research method","motif research"etc,he was also its first practioner.He sup- ported the method of discerning the fake from the ancient historical records by Gu Jiegang, believing that there were four ways in the change of ancient historical narrations:from the simple to the complex one,from the local to the nation wide one,from the mythological to the historical fact,from the allegory to the fact,he summarized his research method by the name of"the method of historical evolution".He was the first man who came up with the two theories in legendary tradition in Chinese history of learning:the law of change in the pattern of"parapet figure"and"snowball rolling,"thus presented the preliminary base for the construction of Chinese legendary tradition.He republished the Journal of Ballad after ten years of stopping publication and dispersing of the scholars like wind and cloud,he proclaimed on the occasion:"At this time,we struggle in the course of ballad data collection,our aim is to cultivating a new land for the newly developing Chinese liter- ature."At the same time,he fathered and published a proposal for nationwide ballad in- vestigation,to confront the trend of the folklore school in Southern China from far.