中国新文学的开山之作《狂人日记》发表至今已六十多年了,但学术界对它的认识仍不一致,特别是对主人公狂人的看法还分歧颇大。这种情况,给这篇课文的教学带来了不少困难,令教者相当棘手。我们认为《狂人日记》研究中的这种情形,与长期来研究者对《狂人日记》的“小序”有所忽略有很大关系。《狂人日记》的主体虽是“日记”,但“小序”也是很重要的,不可漠视。如果说“日记”只是狂人病时状况的展现的话,那么“小序”则为人们提供了一篇相当完整的狂人小传:狂人早先曾在“中学校”学习,后来“大病”,“所患盖‘迫害狂’之类”, It is more than sixty years since the publication of The Madman’s Diary, a pioneer of the Chinese new literature, but there is still a lot of inconsistencies among scholars in its understanding of the new literature. In particular, his views on the protagonist are still quite different. This situation has brought quite a lot of difficulties in the teaching of this text and made it trickier for the teaching staff. We think this kind of situation in the research of Madman’s Diary is closely related to the neglect of researchers in the short order of The Madman’s Diary. Although the main body of “Mad Diary” is a “diary,” “small preface” is also very important and can not be ignored. If “diary” is just a manifestation of the madman’s illness, then “small preface” provides a rather complete biography of the madman: the madman had previously studied in “middle school”, later “seriously ill”, " ’Persecution mad’ and the like ’