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卡特的《马戏团之夜》和莫里森的《宠儿》中的魔幻现实主义比较研究
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摘要
魔幻现实主义是二十世纪新兴起的文学流派之一。它于二十世纪五六十年代兴起于拉丁美洲,七十年代传入欧洲和北美。魔幻现实主义植根于拉美寡头黑暗统治的现实生活中,融汇、吸纳古印第安文学、现实主义文学与西方现当代文学的有益经验,将幻象、神话与现实相结合,大胆借鉴象征、荒诞、意识流等西方现代主义和后现代主义文学的各种表现技巧、手法,以鲜明、独特的拉美地域色彩为特征。其显著特征可以归纳为四大类:民族性、杂合性、魔幻性和繁复性。魔幻现实主义有利于当代文学界的多样性和杂合化,及其反对殖民主义的发展趋势。
     本文以两位当代著名的非拉美女性作家安吉拉·卡特和托尼·莫里森的代表作《马戏团之夜》和《宠儿》为文本,比较了其中的魔幻现实主义特征,分析其异同,并剖析了传统的拉美魔幻现实主义、后现代主义、白人文化和黑人文化这两种不同文化,以及女权主义和后殖民主义给这两部作品带来的影响。
     安吉拉·卡特的《马戏团之夜》和托尼·莫里森的《宠儿》中所表现出的魔幻现实主义特征相同点包括片段化、荒谬性和象征手法的运用。其中,片段化主要体现在这两部作品中所共同表现出的时间的错乱和叙述的并置;荒谬性主要体现在这两部作品中所运用的奇幻的想象和哥特式描写;其象征手法的共性则可归为四类:背景环境——《马戏团之夜》中的“马戏团”和《宠儿》中的“甜蜜之家”、主要人物——《马戏团之夜》中的“蜘蛛网”和《宠儿》中的“宠儿”、人物的身体特征——《马戏团之夜》中菲弗尔斯背上的翅膀和《宠儿》中塞斯背上的“树”状疤痕,以及某些液体意象——《马戏团之夜》中的经血和《宠儿》中的水。
     这两部作品的不同点主要表现在两方面:首先,二者所描述的人物群体不同——《马戏团之夜》为读者呈现了一个女性怪物博物馆,而《宠儿》则描写了一个鬼魂缠绕的黑人社区;第二,二者魔幻性的来源不同——《马戏团之夜》借用西方神话和童话作为其魔幻性的素材,而《宠儿》则将其魔幻性建立在非洲信仰和传说的基础上。
     此外,这两部作品的魔幻现实主义特征存在异同,有其各自原因。由于魔幻现实主义最早在拉美地区兴起,这两部表现魔幻主义的作品不免都受到传统拉美魔幻现实主义的影响,因而都具有传统拉美魔幻现实主义的共同特征;又由于这两部作品的作家都是当代作家,其思想和写作手法不免受到后现代主义的影响,都表现出明显的后现代主义特征(如片段化、怪诞等)。然而,由于写作的侧重点,以及民族和种族的不同,这两位作家的作品中所表现出的魔幻现实主义存在很大差异似乎则是必然的:《马戏团之夜》的魔幻现实主义主要受到了女权主义的影响,而对女性进行了大胆、夸张的刻画;《宠儿》则主要受到其作者的黑人身份的影响,用错乱、离奇、甚至恐怖的魔幻现实主义表现手法对奴隶制及白人文化霸权给予了辛辣的批判,从而表现出后殖民主义对其魔幻现实主义特征的影响。
     本文通过比较和对比安吉拉·卡特和托尼·莫里森这两位作家的代表作中所表现出的魔幻现实主义特征,发现这两部作品在继承了传统拉美魔幻现实主义——杂合性、魔幻性、繁复性——的基础上,又演绎出其不同于拉美的魔幻现实主义特征,如后现代主义、女权主义等;对于进一步探索魔幻现实主义具有一定的价值和意义,并有助于更好地理解和研究安吉拉·卡特和托尼·莫里森这两位作家及其代表作。
Magical realism originated in the German art circle in the 1920s, flourished in Latin America as a literary genre in the 1950s and the 1960s, and spread to Europe and North America in the 1970s. It is rooted in the realities of the brutal rule of Latin American oligarchs, merging and absorbing the beneficial experience of the ancient Indian literature, the realist literature, and the Western modern and postmodern literature, combining fantasy, myths, and reality together, courageously utilizing the modern and postmodern writing techniques, and featuring with the distinct and unique local color of Latin America—ethnicity, hybridity, magical and Gothic characteristics, and complexity and diversity. It is conductive to the diversity and heterozygosis of contemporary literary circle, and the development of anti-colonialism.
     This thesis compares the magical realistic features shown in Nights at the Circus and Beloved, which are the masterpieces of the two famous contemporary non-Latin American female writers, Angela Carter from Britain and Toni Morrison from America, respectively; and penetrates the effects of the two different cultures—White culture and Black culture—on the two works, and the influences of feminism and postcolonialism on the two works.
     The similarities include the application of the techniques of fragmentation, absurdity and symbols, in which fragmentation is mainly embodied in disorder of time and juxtaposition of narration in the two works, absurdity is mainly reflected in the magical imaginations and Gothic descriptions applied in the two works, and the common features in the use of symbols can be concluded into four categories: the settings—the circus in Nights at the Circus and the Sweet Home in Beloved, the characters’names—Cobwebs in Nights at the Circus and Beloved in Beloved, the physical features of some characters—Fevvers’wings in Nights at the Circus and the“tree”on Sethe’s back in Beloved, and the liquid symbols—menstrual blood in Nights at the Circus and water in Beloved.
     The differences of the magical realistic features in the two works are shown mainly from the following two respects: First, the character groups described in the two works are different—Nights at the Circus presents a museum of woman monsters, while Beloved describes a haunted community of Black slaves. Second, the sources of the magical characteristics are different—Nights at the Circus borrows the western myths and fairy tales as the base of its magical realism, while Beloved builds its magical realistic features on the African beliefs and legends.
     The similarities and differences in the two works can be justified in the following respects: First, since magical realism raise and popularized in Latin America, both of the two works, which have shown the features of magical realism, have been unavoidably influenced by, and thus bear the traditional Latin American magical realistic features. Second, since both of the writers of the two works are contemporary writers, their thoughts and writing techniques are inevitably influenced by postmodernism, and thus have the features of postmodernism (e.g. fragmentation, absurdity, etc.). However, because of the different writing emphases and the different ethnicities and races of the two writers, it seems to be inevitable that there are great differences in the two works: Nights at the Circus is mainly influenced by feminism, and thus develops brave and exaggerated descriptions to females; while Beloved, influenced by its author’s Black identity, cynically attacks slavery and the hegemony of the White culture with the magical realistic features of disorder, weirdness, and even horrible descriptions, and thus shows the effect of postcolonialism on the magical realistic features of Beloved.
     Through the comparison of the magical realistic features shown in the masterpieces of Angela Carter and Toni Morrison, this thesis finds that while inheriting traditional magical realistic features (e.g. hybridity, magical and Gothic characteristics, and complexity and diversity, etc.), they have contributed innovations such as postmodernism and feminism, etc.; thus it is significant in the further exploration of magical realism; and hopefully, it can be helpful for the study and understanding of Angela Carter and Toni Morrison, as well as their representative works.
引文
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