论唐传奇中话语空间的叙事作用 — 以≪任氏传≫为中心

Abstract

This paper mainly takes the Tang legend Ren The Fox Fairy as the research subject and explores the narrative role of discourse space in the work. Firstly, this paper traces the origins of discourse space in Chinese novels, finding that it first appeared in Tang legend and established the feature that story space and discourse space coexists in the same text. Secondly, after organizing the works that contain discourse in Tang legend, it finds that Ren The Fox Fairy is the first work in the history of Chinese novel with a clear defined creation time that shows discourse space. Additionally, there are two distincrt discourse spaces in this work, which provide a typicality and reference value for the study of the narrative role of discourse space in Tang legend. Through examining the content of Ren The Fox Fairy, this paper conclude three narrative functions of the discourse space in this work: emphasizing the authenticity of the story’s source, revealing the author’s creative purpose, and forming a dual perspective on values. In summary, the discourse space plays an role of “voice-over” in Ren The Fox Fairy, which is a key reason why it can become a classic Tang legend work because from a content perspective, this story itself does not possess significant literary value in terms of ideological or narrative level. The critical role in Tang legend is largely depends on the content presented in the discourse space. It can be seen from the narrative role of discourse space in legendary novels does have its own unique charm and it is worth continued exploration by future scholars.