摘要
鲍比·安·梅森的《在乡下》被认为是20世纪80年代美国最有影响的小说之一。两个主要人物山姆和艾米特因越战情结而处于阈限阶段,他们构成的阈限“共同体”展现出同质性、平等性、无属性和过渡性的特点。阈限的不稳定性和过渡性引发山姆的求知焦虑和艾米特的战后焦虑。山姆在追寻越战真相的过程中走进四个层级的叙事,尽管她获得部分真相,并帮助艾米特最终勇敢地面对战争创伤,但他们仍难以完全走出阈限,摆脱焦虑,由此折射出越战对美国社会和普通民众深远而复杂的影响。
Bobbie Ann Mason’s In Country is considered one of the most infuential novels in American literature of the 1980s. Two main characters, Sam and her uncle Emmett, both live in a “liminal” stage or space of existence, owing to their ties to the Vietnam War, and the liminal communitas they form features homogeneity, equality,anonymity and transition. Liminal uncertainty and transition lead to Sam’s anxiety in her pursuing the truth of the war, as well as Emmett’s anxiety and guilt, given his survival after the war as a veteran. Although the four narratives Sam experiences provide part of the war’s truth, and although she successfully helps Emmett face his war-engendered trauma,they cannot pass the liminal stage completely and their anxieties do not melt away, which reveals the complex and far-reaching impact that the war exerted upon American people and U.S. culture as a whole.
作者
刘玉红
Liu Yuhong(College of Foreign Studies,Guangxi Normal University,Guilin,China,541004)
出处
《当代外国文学》
CSSCI
北大核心
2022年第3期14-21,共8页
Contemporary Foreign Literature
基金
国家社科基金项目“认知女性主义视域下美国南方女作家的社会焦虑研究”(19BWW074)的阶段性成果。
