中英双语话中国历史名人 第61期:蒲松龄

Pu Songling (1640~1715), courtesy name LiuXian, or Jianchen, was a Chinese fiction writer whose Liaozhai zhiyi (1766; "Strange Stories from Liaozhai's Studio"; Eng. trans. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio) resuscitated the classical genre of short stories.

蒲松龄(1640~1715 )，字留仙，又字剑臣，小说家，他的《聊斋志异》复兴了短篇文言小说这一文学体裁。

Pu's impressive collection of 431 tales of the unusual and supernatural was largely completed by 1679, though he added stories to the manuscript as late as 1707.

蒲松龄的431篇志怪故事的收集工作基本上于1679年完成，但是直到1707年他还在添加小说稿。

The work departed from the prevailing literary fashion that was dominated by more realistic huaben stories written in the colloquial language.

这部作品与当时盛行的文风不同。当时，文坛上占据主导地位的是现实主义的“话本”，话本用白话写成。

Pu instead wrote his stories in the classical idiom, freely adopting forms and themes from the old chuanqi ("marvel tales") of the Tang and Song dynasties.

但是蒲松龄却用文言文写小说，并且自由地采用唐宋“传奇”的形式和主题。

Although Pu lived and died as an obscure provincial schoolteacher, his work gained fame when it was first printed some 50 years after his death, inspiring many imitations and creating a new vogue for classical stories.

尽管蒲松龄一生都仅是个地位不高的教书先生，但是他去世50年后，其作品一经出版就带来了声望，从而使很多人模仿他的作品，进而使文言小说再度流行起来。

He is credited with having adapted several of his tales into "drum songs", a popular dramatic form of the time.

蒲松龄还把他的几个故事改编成“鼓词”(当时流行的一种戏剧形式)。

The colloquial novel Xingshi yinyuanzhuan (1644~1661); "A Marriage to Awaken, the World";Eng. trans. The Bonds of Matrimony), which realistically portrays an unhappy contemporary marriage, was attributed to him by some scholars.

有些学者认为《醒世姻缘传》(约1644~1661)的作者也是蒲松龄。《醒世姻缘传》对当时不幸福的婚姻做了现实主义的描绘。