平民的情歌: 從晚清北方唱本看下層女性對性別、性愛的理解與期待

Abstract

In Ming and Qing popular narrative genres the role of the male protagonist most attracting the interest of women in romantic tales is generally the “talented scholar,” and this has become something of a commonplace within much of the research on masculinity in traditional Chinese society. Yet, reading songs where women narrate episodes of love, sex and marriage in late Qing popular songbooks from northern China (“bun booth books”), we find a phenomenon that goes against the usual grain of “popular literature,” which is a near complete absence of the themes along the lines of “a scholar down on his luck rising to top the palace examination list.” On the contrary, the male protagonists are men we would expect rural women to meet, such as farmers, peddlers, craftsmen, while the songs they tell of their flirtation, affairs, passion, violence, and family disputes paint a far more quotidian picture of the realities of commoner women’s lives. Drawing on a body of little-studied late Qing commoner songbooks, this paper will consider the distance between how women position and relate to men in this low-status genre and in literati vernacular literature.

在明清通俗叙事文學中，上層社會的“才子佳人”通常會作爲對讀者最有吸引力的社會精英成爲言情小説的主角，然而，考察晚清流行的北方平民唱本（俗稱“饅頭舖本”）中一些女性叙述自己的婚戀和性愛生活的歌曲，可以發現一個與我們通常理解的“通俗文學”脱節的現象：在這些唱本裡很少看到“私定終身後花園，落難公子中狀元”之類的情節，相反，都是農村婦女通常接觸到的農夫、貨郎、手藝人，他們之間的調情、出軌、激情和暴力、以及家庭矛盾，使我們看到一個遠爲實際的下層社會男女的生活。本文試圖通過對一系列一直没有被學界重視的晚清北方平民唱本的考察，探討與士人創作的通俗文學脱節的平民文學——尤其是女性——對性愛的期待和理解.