摘要
英国作家毛姆的《彩色面纱》因其异国描写成为国内研究者的关注对象。本文聚焦于作品叙事形式与中国形象描述之关系,分析叙事视角折射下的异国想象,揭示作品描述人物感知到想象呈现的两种形象:停滞落后的殖民地与淳朴宁静的田园乐土。文章指出,这两种想象并非作为一个对立结构同时出现在作品中,而是伴随故事情节发展先后出现在人物的意识中。从故事层讲,这种突出认识转变的描写方式代表了异域经验中的乌托邦想象;从作者与作品关系角度看,两个形象反映了毛姆对已有中国形象套话叙事的历史移置与重新利用,在一定程度上表现了20世纪初西方文化想象对古代东方的重新发现。作为一个对立于现代西方的他者,淳朴宁静的田园乐土想象遮蔽了混乱停滞的现实,在质疑西方文明的同时隐含了对中国现代性的否定。
W.Somerset Maugham's The Painted Veil has attracted much critical attention for its exotic depiction of China in an era of colonial retreat at the beginning of the twentieth century.Resorting to a close reading of how narrative perspective is deployed in the novel,this paper reveals how characters' perception of the 'lived' reality in China is relocated in a double seeing of both the negative reality and an imaginary oriental pastoral,engaging the reader in imagining a pre-modern China as an oriental Other with its mysterious wisdom of Taoism.Such a double seeing enables Maugham to express his negative attitude towards the colonial West while simultaneously betraying a disavowal of China's modernity at a historical moment.
出处
《外国文学》
CSSCI
北大核心
2011年第4期47-53,157-158,共7页
Foreign Literature
基金
中央高校基本科研业务费专项资金资助(2009AB-8)
