역사 서사의 ‘다시쓰기’ 관점에서의 《列女傳⋅孽嬖傳》 讀解

초록

This study aims to analyze the “rewriting” aspects of “Niebi zhuan”(孽嬖傳, Biographies of Illegitimate and Favored Consorts), one of the seven fascicles in Lienüzhuan (列女傳, Biographies of Exemplary Women) compiled by Liu Xiang (劉向, 77–6 BCE), and to interpret its significance. Focusing on the narrative structures, character functions, and the dynamics of interpersonal relations, this paper compares and examines “Niebi zhuan” alongside the historical narratives of preceding texts, with particular attention to their gendered implications. “Niebi zhuan” deploys a gendered causality as its core narrative principle by merging the classical historiographical law of “recompense” (報) with sexual difference. As a result, earlier historical records are reconfigured into linear narratives in which women’s inappropriate desires and actions inevitably bring about disaster. In this process, female figures emerge as indispensable agents for completing the causal chain of the narrative, thereby intensifying both the causality and linearity of the storyline while simultaneously amplifying the narrative agency of women. However, the interplay between the “stories” created through the representation of female figures and the narrator’s evaluative commentary often reveals tensions and dissonances between the narrative and discursive levels. It is precisely in these boundaries and fissures that a new reading of “Niebi zhuan” becomes possible.

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