路径与窗口——论刘若愚及在美国学界崛起的华裔比较诗学研究族群

多年来,华裔学者在西方学术语境下操用英语所展开的中西比较诗学研究,在美国学界崛起了一个重要的学术流派,即华裔比较诗学研究族群,其中首席学者就是刘若愚。不同于汉语本土的国别诗学研究,华裔比较诗学研究族群的学术目的,是为了把中国诗学准确地介绍给西方学者,也是为了使中国诗学走出单边的汉语学术语境,融入世界文学理论的家族谱系,因此这就决定他们必须把中国诗学汇通与整合到西方诗学体系中,以此使西方学者能够透过其熟悉的本土诗学理论作为沟通的路径和对话的窗口,来接受与研究中国诗学,所以他们所从事的比较诗学研究是在一种颇具相当难度的汉英诗学理论话语的转换中,使中国诗学思想及中国诗学研究走向国际学术界的。从某种程度上来考量,华裔族群的比较诗学研究所操用的是一种杂混的学术英语,其中浸润着来自于中国诗学文化传统的诸种信息,而对中国汉语学者来说,这些学术信息也成为中国学者步入西方诗学体系的路径与窗口。

The Way and the Window:On James Liu and the Promising Population of Chinese-American Scholars of Comparative Poetics in American Academe

James Liu was the chief representative of a promising population of Chinese-American scholars working on comparative poetics in English in the context of Western academe;they have been accepted as an important academic school in the United States for years.Unlike the researchers in national poetics in China,these scholars are determined to introduce the Chinese poetics to the West precisely as what it is,so that it may step out of the unilateral context of Chinese academe and become part of the family tree of the world literary theories.Therefore,they have to arrange and integrate the Chinese poetics into the system of Western poetics to make sure that Western scholars may employ the familiar native poetics theories as a way of communication and a window of discourse to accept and study the Chinese poetics.They lead the Chinese poetics thoughts and studies to the international academe with a rather difficult interchange of Chinese and English poetics theory discourse.To some extent,what the comparative poetics studies of Chinese-American scholars employ is a mingled academic English containing various kinds of information of Chinese poetics tradition which,for native Chinese scholars,is in turn a way and a window to step into the system of Western poetics.