缺乏机械化的现代性：鸦片战争前夕小说形态的改变

在19世纪晚期技术革命发生前,中国出版业的类型出现了重大变化,时间上主要是乾隆晚期、嘉庆和道光年间(1796-1850),即19世纪上半叶。在19世纪晚期"古腾堡式的机械印刷"传入上海时,机械化出现了,而在此之前正发生四种变化,它们导向的正是所谓文学现代性的后期标志。这四种变化包括小说的产量、发行方式、小说中表现的国际意识以及小说预期的读者构成。这些趋势的出现早于 19世纪晚期印刷技术革命,也早于 20世纪初期教育和文学生活中的变化。这表明在试图定义文学现代性时,必须既关注突然的外部影响或内部革命造成的因果变化的力量,也要关注连续性。

Modernization without Mechanization : The Changing Shape of Fiction on the Eve of the Opium War

This study explores patterns in Chinese publishing before the technological revolution of the late-nineteenthcentury .It centers on thelate Qianlong,Jiaqing andDaoguang reign periods (1796-1850) .The focusis largely on fiction,but I occasionally look beyond that genre by wayof supplementing the discussion .Well before the mechanization that took place when Gutenberg arrived in late-nineteenth century Shanghai,to use Christopher A .Reed's formulation,four changes were underway that point in thedirection of what aregenerallyidentified as later markers of literary modernity .These four are the amount of fictional output,the way it was distributed,the amount of international awareness in the fiction,and the composition of the readership for which it was designed .The existence of these trends prior to the late-nineteenth century revolution in printing technology and,even more,to the early twentieth century changes in education and literary life suggest that,in our efforts to define literary modernity,we should be attentive to continuities as well as to the causal force of sudden outside influences or internal revolutions .