허버트 자일스(Herbert A. Giles)의 《중국문학사》 체제와 소설의 위상

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to take an overview of the format and characteristics of H.A.Giles(1845-1935)’s History of Chinese Literature, and especially to examine the description of novels in more detail. First of all, let's look at the format and characteristics of Giles’s History of Chinese Literature as follows. First, he divided the 2,500-year history of Chinese literature into eight periods, centering on dynasty transitions: ① Feudal Period ② Han Dynasty ③ Minor Dynasties ④ Tang Dynasty ⑤ Song dynasty ⑥ Mongol dynasty ⑦ Ming dynasty ⑧ Manchu dynasty. Second, it included not only the modern concept of pure literary genres, namely poetry, novel, play, and prose, but also non-literary fields such as history, philosophy, medicine, agriculture, dictionary, encyclopedia, proverbs and maxims, etc. Third, Buddhism, the invention of woodblock printing, and wall literature and journalism were organized into separate chapters and dealt with in greater detail. In the second place, if we look at the description of the novel in Giles’s History of Chinese Literature, its characteristics are as follows. First, on the surface, Chinese novels were set as separate chapters in the three dynasties of the Yuan, Ming, and Qing, and were described with great importance after poetry. Second, the description of the novel's history, such as its origin, development process, and stylistic characteristic, were poor. Third, Giles’s book showed no recognition of the difference between Classical Chinese and Vernacular Chinese, and therefore, it was described without distinction between Classical Novels and Vernacular novels. Fourth, Giles used a strategy to help English-speaking readers understand by comparing Chinese novels with British authors and works. Overall, Giles' History of Chinese Literature has an ambiguous concept of literature and its categories are overly broad. There is also a lack of historical insight into the origins and development of literary genres. In addition, translation examples occupy too much. Nevertheless, Giles’s book has some advantages over the history of Chinese literature written by early Chinese. it particularly includes descriptions of novels and plays, and encompasses literary phenomena from the Qing Dynasty to modern times. It is also worthy of positive evaluation that it covers major literary phenomena and genres of each era, as well as major writers and works. However, while writing the history of literature, Giles tried to include as much as possible his previous translations, without considering the distinction between literature and non-literature, the importance of works. It made its shortcomings more prominent and caused harsh criticism despite the many advantages.