清代世情小说对故事时间的设定存在着一种特殊趋势，在设定了具体朝代年号的此类小说中，多数作品趋向于将明代嘉靖设定为故事的时间背景。经统计，在118种标明了朝代年号的清代世情小说中，以明朝年号为背景的小说占62种，其中有19种作品设定明代嘉靖为故事的背景时间，数量占比近三分之一。本文将从小说文本内部与外部双重视角出发，考察多数清代世情小说偏向于假借嘉靖为故事时间的原因，并进一步评述这种假借嘉靖的时间叙述带来的书写影响与艺术效果。

从小说文本内部而言，清代世情小说对嘉靖时间的设定，首先受到情节模式演变的影响，反角拨乱的模式变化与严嵩故事的广泛流传，导致清代世情小说频繁地将严嵩作为奸臣的代表性符号引入到情节发展之中，从而推动了嘉靖作为故事时间的设定。其次，小说家对世情故事中士子人物的形象映衬与命运构思，也影响到了对故事时间的抉择，一方面，小说家致力于为笔下的才子名士打造一个文教隆盛的典型时代环境；另一方面，嘉靖时期荐举制度的特殊状态，促使清代小说家在构思士子人物的前途命运时，更容易将人物荐举情节联系到嘉靖时代。此外，小说家为故事构造知识性的细节图景时，对嘉靖时代的知识储备，则可能会潜移默化地影响着故事时间在明代嘉靖的落点。

从小说文本外部来看，清代世情小说的故事时间设定，很大程度上受到清代文化禁毁环境的影响。一方面，在文化控制与政治禁忌的政策执行下，南宋抗金时期、宋元明三朝易代之际以及清代当朝，都成为文人书写的禁忌时段，明代嘉靖则相对而言成为一个“安全年代”。另一方面，清代当朝对华夏中心论与传统华夷观念的驳斥，导致文人书写中亦不能带有对少数民族或异族的鄙薄语态，对女真、蒙古等部族的书写更加受到满族统治者的警惕和钳制，对嘉靖倭寇的书写则反而由于清廷对日本国的特殊立场而得到了叙述安全与自由保障。因此，多数清代世情小说假借嘉靖，在保障安全的前提下实现叙事的自由调度，并进一步在嘉靖倭寇的书写中埋藏着对北方少数部族的警惕心理与反抗情绪，为汉族传统的华夷观念内核寻得一个安全而隐蔽的题材遮盖。

整体而言，清代世情小说对嘉靖时间的假借叙述存在三种书写状态，并由此形成了不同的意蕴效果。其一，小说对嘉靖年号最为简单粗略的假借叙述，便是只写明嘉靖的相关时间语词，故事文本中没有其他对嘉靖时间的呼应描写，这种消极假借的书写状态，导致故事文本与故事时间之间产生巨大裂隙，形成了一些时间迷向的“真空故事”。其二，一些清代世情小说在利用嘉靖的多种时代标志进行题材融合的写作尝试，同时试图借助那些典型的时代特征拉近假借时间与故事文本的距离，但这种对嘉靖时代的粗泛观察，导致故事时间仍然无法很好地贴合文本肌理。最后，以《儒林外史》《歧路灯》为代表的清代世情小说，则在文本中对嘉靖年号进行了颇具时间美感的深度融裁，将嘉靖的时间痕迹自然地熔铸在故事的场景细节之中，故事假借的明代嘉靖与作者所处的清代当朝，通过这种假借嘉靖的时间融裁共生于小说文本的一些场景和名物之中，形成双重时空交叠融合的特殊效果。

There is a special tendency in the setting of story time in Qing Dynasty secular novels. In such novels with specific dynasty titles, most of the works tended to set story time at Jiajing of Ming dynasty. According to statistics, there are 62 novels setting in the Ming Dynasty among 118 Qing Dynasty secular novels with specific dynasty marks. Involving in those 62 novels, there are 19 works setting their story time at Jiajing of Ming dynasty, which account for nearly a third of the 62 novels. This article will start from the internal and external perspectives of the novel text to analyze the reasons of this special phenomenon. At the end, this research comments the writing influence and artistic effect of this special phenomenon about story time setting.

Inspecting the inside of the novel text, the first contributing factor is the evolution of plot patterns. The pattern change of the villain disturbance and the widespread spread of Yan Song's story both result in the situation that Qing Dynasty novels frequently introduce Yan Song into the plot as a representative symbol of treacherous officials, which makes the story time set on Jiajing period. Secondly, the image and destiny conception of the scholar characters in the story also influence the choice of the story time. On the one hand, the novelists were committed to creating a typical environment of flourishing culture and education for the talented and famous people under his pen. On the other hand, the special situation of the recommendation system during the Jiajing period prompted Qing Dynasty novelists to more easily link the character recommendation plot to the Jiajing period when conceptualizing the future and destiny of scholar characters. In addition, when the novelists constructed intellectual detailed pictures for the story, the knowledge reserve of the Jiajing era may subtly affect the landing point of the story time in Jiajing of Ming Dynasty.

From the external perspective of the novel text, the story time setting of Qing Dynasty's secular novels is largely influenced by the cultural prohibition and destruction environment of the Qing Dynasty. On the one hand, Jiajing period became a safe time in culture forbidden environment of Qing dynasty. On the other hand, because of the Qing Dynasty's rejection to the Huayi national concept, literati writing could not have a disdainful voice to minorities or foreign nationalities. On the contrary, the writing of Japanese pirates in Jiajing was guaranteed the security and freedom of the narrative because of the special stance of the Qing Court towards Japan. As a result, many Qing dynasty secular novels chose to write plots about Japanese pirates in order to realize the security and freedom of the narrative, which prompted the story time setting on Jiajing period.

On the whole, there are three kinds of writing styles in Qing Dynasty novels to narrate the story time on Jiajing , and thus form different implication and effects. Firstly, the simplest and most rough narration of Jiajing in the novels is that only the relevant time words of Jiajing are written, and there is no other echo description of the time of Jiajing in the story text. Secondly, some Qing dynasty secular novels attempted to integrate different themes by utilizing various historical landmarks of the Jiajing period, while also attempting to use typical historical features to narrow the gap between borrowed story time and the story text. However, this rough observation of the Jiajing period resulted in the story time still not being able to fit the texture of the text well. In the Qing Dynasty novels such as the Scholar and Qi Lu Deng , Jiajing Era is deeply blended with time aesthetic feeling, and the time traces of Jiajing are naturally cast in the details of the story scenes, which formed the special effect of double space-time overlapping fusion.