| The subject of "Jonathan D. Spence’s historical narrative" in fact involves two aspects:historical narrative, and Spence’s historical narrative, Both of these two aspects are extremely controversial subjects, especially for the history study in China, due to the fact that historical narrative is not a mainstream in China’s history study nowadays, and its relevant research has just started。Narrative has been a mainstream article style in the Western history since the origin of its history study, As a matter of fact, historical narrative has been a mainstream style in China for long periods of time historically, However, since the19th century, the western history study has moved from narrative to science, and its expression approach has shifted from narration to analysis, Then from the1970s, along with the retrospect of the society history,there appeared a number of important historical narratives, which re-emphasized the importance of narrative and fostered "The Revival of Narrative", However, there has been constant questioning of narrative’s inability of "seeking the truth" and "seeking the law", and historical narrative has frequently been criticized for its ambiguous boundary with historical novel。In contrast, historical philosophy study favours narrative, Represented by Hayden White, postmodern history theory introduced the concept of literature criticism to historical philosophy in analysing historical literature, Because of the emphasis put on historical literature, Hayden White’s research on the "content of format" for narrative also had an impact on the "objectiveness" that demonstrative history study claimed, and reduced the pressure on the task of "seeking the truth", to the extent that extreme postmodernism considers history to be solely constructive literature and entirely narrative, Therefore, Hayden White’s theory is also called narrative historical philosophy and it is considered to be another major achievement after the critical and analytical historical philosophy by the Western history study。However, this "ancient" type of method of dissecting literature from its original meaning had much difficulty in getting approval from historians, Since the20th century, efforts have been made in trying to go beyond the narrative historical philosophy in the Western historical theory circle, Besides Frank Ankersmit’s theory in "experience", both "presence" and "witness" have emphasized memories, and they all demonstrated the efforts in trying to go beyond literature and to return to human being’s living experience itself, Nevertheless, like what postmodern historians have pointed out, language and literature are "the only games in the village", and human being’s living experience eventually has to be expressed through language, literature and narrative, As to what kind of narrative may achieve this, much additional thinking and exploration are required。In history’s practices, since "The Revival of Narrative", there have been a number of historians that write historical narratives, They have made many brave attempts and fruitful achievements, but also brought endless debates at the same time, Among these historians, Jonathan D. Spence is a quite representative case。In the past over thirty years, Spence has written more than ten narratives about the Chinese history of Ming, Qing dynasty and modern times, These literatures were favoured by numerous American readers and brought him lots of honours, He was once the chair of the American History Society, which demonstrated the approval he had received from the American history study circle, In recent years, as his works are being translated into Chinese, Jonathan D. Spence has received more and more attention from the historians in both mainland China and Taiwan, As a matter of fact though, his works have received as much questioning as the praise, No matter in the US, or in China, the criticisms are very harsh, Some critics criticized Spence to be "ineligible" as a historian, and some others referred to Qian Zhongshu’s words saying that Spence is simply an "unsuccessful novelist"。The main reason why Spence’s works are so controversial is that they are "narratives", Due to this style of writing, Spence’s supporters think his history works are beautiful, of touching details, full of humanity, innovative in both subject and style, unique in understanding the Chinese history, and of great popularity; while his critics raised a key question: is Spence "telling stories", or is he writing history? The potential answer to this question is:Spence knows only how to "tell stories", and he is not an "eligible" historian, The reasoning of this mainly come from the following aspects:1, Spence doesn’t have a proper background in history study, and he had serious problems in applying certain materials, for example:unqualified Chinese; mistakes in the basic understanding of history; problems in choosing certain materials; large reference to second-hand literature; misuse of literature as history,2, Spence’s narratives contain "imagination" and "fiction", which are not supposed to appear in historical works,3, Spence’s works are mainly "story telling" narratives, which are no longer mainstream history writing, as such narratives are usually very subjective instead of objective,4, There is no depth in Spence’s narratives:they don’t answer any historical questions, lack in-depth thinking, have no in-depth explanation, and lack intellectual creativity,5, His works aim at satisfying people’s curiosity and lack grasp of history。Currently, research on Spence’s works has just started, and the two opinions are usually found in book reviews or general introductions, Generally speaking they only speak to themselves and rarely come across each other, thereby just scratching the surface。We should realize that simple symbolic research is meaningless toward understanding Jonathan D. Spence, as no matter his historical views, or his way of writing narrative history is rather complicated, In fact, in Spence’s over thirty years’career or history writing, he was influenced by many history study streams:society history, new culture history, postmodernism, narrative poem, micro history, women history, etc, Also, as an American scholar who researches on Chinese study, he has to be influenced by the big environment, Additionally, he was quite influenced by the traditional Chinese history studying theorems since he studied from a Chinese scholar Fang Chaoying and admired Sima Qian, Therefore his narrative history works bear influence from the Western traditional historical narratives, Sima Qian’s bibliography history works, social science history studies, and Spence’s unique creativity of his own, Only if we analyze those problems thoroughly can we actually recognize Spence’s values and flaws, so that we can consider the value and limitation of history narrative, and the complex relations between literature and history and literature and science, and benefit ourselves in future history writings。Surrounding the subject of "Spence’s historical narrative", this paper will conduct analyses from the following perspectives:First of all, put Spence into the context of specific academic networks, and grasp his historical narratives from both history study and history theories, analyse his career path and his relation with American Chinese study and postmodernism, and point out where his creativity lies in:his academic focus shifted from identifying facts to describing facts。Secondly, clarify the rise and decline and theoretical debates of historical narrative, explore the marginalization, revival and their reasons, and analyse the two core debates around historical narrative- whether history narrative can accomplish "seeking the truth" and "seeking the law", and how to distinguish historical narrative from historical novel, Based on this, discuss the new findings in the value of narrative from postmodernism history theory, and the relation between narrative and Frank Ankersmit’s "experience" theory。Then in the following three chapters, analyse in details of the content, format and history theorem of Spence’s historical narrative, In the content chapter, focus on discussing his emphasis on characters, environment, and stories and his unique way of choosing topics, as well as discuss his respect for environment, life experience and historical literature, and illustrate his traditional history studying method and his choice and persistence in various new history theorems, In the format chapter, analyse the unique creativity of his works in language, perspective and structure with the help of relevant theories in literature narrative, In the history theorem chapter, focus on discussing his unique theory in studying history and his achievements, and observe Spence from both perspectives of narrativism history philosophy and experience category, so as to clarify his historical theorems one step further。Finally, briefly discuss the value of Spence’s historical narraritive writing, the mistakes from his works, and the inspirations from his academic attitude。No matter from the perspective of practice or theory in historical study, narrative has its important values that are not replaceable, Chinese history theorists have realized this point long time ago, Zhang Xuecheng wrote "Organizing and ordering are so called history editing, Referring and discussing are so called history verification, Neither one is historical study," Ying-Shih Yu pointed out in his "historical study, family and times" speech that, the historical papers nowadays scattered in countless specialized magazines would simply be dead knowledge in libraries without someone synthesizing and integrating them (not to say that they are worthless), Historical narrative carries the very task of synthesis, and it is a format of writing that integrates historians’ philosophy and expectation of the society and life, In this respect, Jonathan D. Spence’s historical narrative is a useful object to refer to, To recognize his creativity and to grasp from the level of theory would be helpful in deepening the research and valuable to the development of historical study theory。... |
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