《夷堅志》是宋代文人洪邁編撰的一部筆記小說。書中大多數故事是洪邁根據周圍人的講述記錄下來的,因而洪邁認為這些故事具有真實性。本文借用英國漢學家杜德橋的看法,把這些資料視為通俗文學的一種現象。《夷堅志》里有很多故事以各式各樣的女性為主角,是研究當時婦女生活很有價值的資料。本文提出運用這些故事的四個方面:(一)用以發掘沒想到或在其它資料中看不到的女性生活細節;(二)研究它與其他資料的異同;(三)探討故事后面的含意,尤其有關婦女情況的含意;(四)思考怎么處理和理解一些晦澀而沒有邏輯的故事。文中舉例對這四方面進行了說明。

Yijianzhi is a collection of anecdotes and tales compiled by the Song dynasty literatus Hong Mai. Most of the stories it contains were transmitted orally to Hong Mai by people he knew. Consequently,Hong Mai believed the stories to be reliable accounts of events that had actually happened. This article follows the methods of the British Sinologist Glen Dudbridge in viewing such stories as belonging to medieval China’s "vernacular culture. "Many of Yijianzhi’s stories feature one or another type of women as their protagonist,and so the collection is a valuable source for the study of women of that period. This article pursues four approaches to using these stories:( 1) to discover in them aspects of women’s lives that are little known and not revealed in other Song dynasty materials;( 2) to find representations of women that are at odds with what we find in other materials;( 3) to explore aspects of women’s lives that the stories broach only in an indirect or suppressed manner; and( 4) to reflect on ways to deal with and interpret unclear or illogical stories. Particular stories are discussed in each of these four categories.