【作者】 谭惠娟；

【导师】 宁一中；

【作者基本信息】 北京语言大学 ， 比较文学与世界文学， 2007， 博士

【摘要】 拉尔夫·埃利森(Ralph Ellison,1914 -1994)是美国二十世纪五十年代以来最重要的黑人文学作家,同时是一个卓有成效的美国文学评论家,还是20世纪美国文化研究的重要开拓者之一。他对美国黑人文学和美国文学作出了里程碑式的贡献,在整个美国非裔文学创作及文学理论的发展演变过程中起到了承前启后的作用。拉尔夫·埃利森在自己的文学创作、文学评论和文化评论中表现出超前的文化思想,与哈莱姆文艺复兴时期的代表人物艾伦·洛克的文化思想一脉相传,又对托尼·莫里森、伊斯米尔·里德和亨利·路易·盖茨等一大批当代著名黑人作家和批评家产生深远影响。拉尔夫·埃利森以美国现代作家的身份出现在世界文坛,文学界普遍认为,其《无形人》的问世标志着黑人文学脱离现实主义和自然主义文风,迈入了现代文学的殿堂,但值得注意的是,拉尔夫·埃利森对美国非裔文学的里程碑式贡献还远不在此。本文拟在文化研究的视野下观照拉尔夫·埃利森的文学创作、文学思想和文化思想,探讨其多元性的文化内涵及意义。论文共由六章组成。第一章将拉尔夫·埃利森文学现象的出现放在美国黑人文学发展的历史链中进行考察。本章主要运用哈罗德·布鲁姆的“影响的焦虑”理论,从讨论理查德·赖特的自然主义抗议小说入手,探讨美国黑人作家詹姆斯·鲍德温向自己文学创作的引路人、当时美国黑人文学代表人物理查德·赖特发起猛烈攻击的原因,意在揭示鲍德温在文学上的“弑父”不仅与他个人生活中的“弑父”情结相关,更深层的动因则在于当时美国黑人文学正经历着由赖特式的“抗议小说”向拉尔夫·埃利森为代表的新型黑人文学转向。鲍德温在描写黑人人性、展示黑人文化、提升黑人文学的艺术水平、探索种族歧视与冲突问题等方面,都提出了超越赖特的抗议文学主张,但他本人的思想观念和创作实践又还存在诸多自相矛盾之处,新型黑人文学直到拉尔夫·埃利森的《无形人》问世才得以正式确立。第二章重点围绕犹太籍美国左翼文学评论家欧文·豪与拉尔夫·埃利森关于意识形态与艺术美学上的争论展开。在这场论争中,欧文·豪主要抨击的对象詹姆斯·鲍德温基本上保持沉默,而被抨击的次要对象拉尔夫·埃利森却立即做出反应,写下了洋洋洒洒的《这个世界和这个大罐》和《隐含的姓名和复杂的命运》,就黑人文学作家之家谱、尼格鲁作家的职责与尼格鲁文学的发展方向等重大问题阐述了自己的独到见解。拉尔夫·埃利森早期非小说及小说创作中一以贯之的艺术美学观、拉尔夫·埃利森对美国文化问题的剖析,以及对美国黑人文学创作的艺术提升,都是他赢得这场文学之争的关键。同时,美国黑人文学发展的内在规律也是不可忽视的原因。第三章集中讨论了拉尔夫·埃利森对人性的剖析。在美国,关于黑人是否也和白人一样具有正常人性的争论,从18世纪美国奴隶制时开始,一直延续至今,也直接关涉到美国发生的种种社会冲突和矛盾。在美国历史上,白人往往通过否定黑人人性以达到其高人一等的目的,而黑人知识分子则不遗余力地为黑人的人性辩护。拉尔夫·埃利森通过对梅尔维尔、福克纳和马克·吐温等19世纪美国经典白人作品的解读,赞赏了这些作家在肯定黑人人性时表现出的人道主义精神;同时运用高度象征性和颠覆性的语言,展示了黑人的人性,揭示了白人的非人性;并通过“斯芬克斯之谜”典故的阐释,对普遍意义上的人性作了探讨,体现了作者对所有现代人的生存困境的关注,从而超越了以斯陀夫人的小说为代表的注重道义的宣传的传统文学,以及以理查德·赖特的创作为代表的注重态度强硬的抗议与暴力的表达的自然主义文学,体现出回归与提升19世纪人文主义作家人道主义精神的创作倾向。第四章专门探讨了布鲁斯音乐在拉尔夫·埃利森文学创作中的运用。布鲁斯音乐与拉尔夫·埃利森的文学创作之间有一种水乳交融的关系。布鲁斯音乐是爵士乐的雏形,作为一种音乐形式,它在美国的起源与发展过程见证了黑人在美国坎坷不平的生活经历。经典的布鲁斯音乐和成功的布鲁斯歌手将这种艺术形式升华为一种在逆境中保持乐观精神的生存方式。拉尔夫·埃利森不仅从布鲁斯音乐旋律中看到这种表现生存方式和展现生命哲学的途径,还从中意识到了黑人音乐的文学潜能。他率先将这种文学潜能成功地转化为一种文学行为,原创性地将布鲁斯音乐运用于文学批评和小说创作中,在美国黑人文学史上获得了空前的成功,也为20世纪美国黑人文学走出自然主义抗议文学的窠臼、走向一种新型文学奠定了基础。本章主要通过对拉尔夫·埃利森评论性文章《理查德·赖特的布鲁斯》和小说《无形人》的分析,论证拉尔夫·埃利森是如何从布鲁斯音乐中获得一种哲学和表现手法上的灵感和启发,如何将其作品人物的个人不幸转化为一种布鲁斯的语言代码,进而揭示拉尔夫·埃利森作品的多种思想内涵及其对美国种族问题的深度思考。第五章主要探讨拉尔夫·埃利森的文学创作、文学评论和文化评论中的现代主义、后现代主义倾向的渊源。首先比较了理查德·赖特式的自然主义抗议小说与美国19世纪末20世纪初以西奥多·德莱塞为代表的美国白人主流文学中的自然主义文学创作之间的内在关联及差异,旨在揭示理查德·赖特的文学创作和文学思想中自然主义、现实主义和现代主义杂糅的特征,力求对理查德·赖特的文学造诣和贡献作出客观公正的评价。然后探讨拉尔夫·埃利森对赖特的超越,阐述拉尔夫·埃利森文学创作之“绕道而行”,从而凸现出拉尔夫·埃利森文学创作、文学评论和文化评论的现代主义和后现代主义特征。第六章主要通过文本分析,展示拉尔夫·埃利森文学创作、文学评论和文化评论中现代主义和后现代主义特征的具体表现。笔者运用德里达的“白色的神话”和罗兰·巴特的“解神化”理论,探讨拉尔夫·埃利森对西方神话仪式中黑白对立的解构,揭示拉尔夫·埃利森文化思想和文学叙述手法的独创性与超前性。拉尔夫·埃利森《无形人》的中心隐喻“无形性”,是作者对美国黑人文化及其价值观长期思考的结果,这一隐喻标志着美国黑人文学创作由注重意识形态的抗议小说,朝注重艺术美学的现代小说转向。这一转向着重表现在作者对欧洲黑白二元对立神话和美国南方社会仪式的解构,以及作者创作中祖先在场的文学叙述手法的运用。拉尔夫·埃利森对神话和仪式的重新发现和阐释,是作者的文化思想在文学创作中的集中体现之一,也是对20世纪30年代盛行的从社会学的角度研究黑人问题的有力反拨;而祖先在场的文学叙述手法则有助于美国种族主义者重新审视自己的身份和美国文化,有助于破解“无形性”被曲解的含义和真正内涵。更多还原

【Abstract】 Ralph Ellison(1914 -1994), the most important American black writer since 1950s, is also an outstanding literary critic, and one of the most significant pioneers of American cultural studies. He made a milestone contribution both to African American literature and American literature, and acted in full sense as a successor and a forerunner in the history of African American literary theory and practice.He showed in his literary works a foreseeing cultural vision, obviously inheriting from Alain Lock, a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, continuing to exert a profound and far-reaching impact on such famous African American writers and critics as Toni Morrison, Ishmael Reed, and Henry Louis Gates. He captured the wide attention of world literature as a modern writer by deviating from Richard Wright’s naturalistic protest and social realistic fiction and was lionized for his Invisible Man, while it should be further noted that Ellison’s milestone contribution to African American literature is far more than that.This dissertation tries to examine Ellison’s literary works in the context of cultural studies, taking the success and failure of Richard Wright’s naturalistic protest novel as a point of departure, and going ahead with a discussion of James Baldwin’s literary patricide and his moralistic flaw, towards a comprehensive engagement of Ralph Ellison literary works and cultural studies. The dissertation consists of five chapters:In the first chapter, the author seeks to place Ralph Ellison in the historical chains of African American literary development, and to examine why Wright’s protégé, James Baldwin, an American black ephebe, advanced an unrelenting criticism of naturalism of Richard Wright, the precursor in African American literary circle. Baldwin’s action, which might be interpreted as the literary patricide described in Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence, was rather triggered by the upcoming turn of African-American writing from protest school to modernism triumphantly achieved by Ralph Ellison, than motivated by the patricide complex in his life experience. Though Baldwin took the initiative in depicting black humanity, advocating black culture, uplifting black literature and exploring racial discrimination and conflict, trying to transcend Richard’s protest writing, his writing principles revealed certain inconsistencies and dilemma. Baldwin’s personal and literary patricides brought about internecine both to Wright and himself, while as an indispensable tache in the African- American literature progress, its positive significance must never be overlooked, but it is Ralph Ellison’s Invisbile Man which brought about a new direction to the development of African American literature.Chapter Two dwells on the literary dispute between Irving Howe and Ralph Ellison on ideology and artistic aesthetics. Irving Howe’s essay“Black Boys and Native Sons”takes James Baldwin as the main target, who just kept silent, while Ralph Ellison as the secondary target, who gave prompt responses with his marvelous and masterful essays“The World and the Jug,”and“Hidden Name and Complex Fate,”elaborating with refreshing insight on such crucial issues as the field of influence for a black writer, the social and art obligation of a black writer, and the new directions in black literary writing. The author tries to justify Ellison’s view by a detailed analysis of Ralph Ellison’s early short fiction, and to demonstrate the significance of Ralph Ellison’s literary patricide to the new development trend in African American literature, which also illustrates why Ellison turns out to be the winner, and Irving Howe, the loser of this literary debate. The internal law for the development of African American literature is also a factor not to be ignored.The third chapter centers on Ralph Ellison’s anatomy of humanity. The debate whether the black man possesses human nature or not started from the slavery time in the 18th century in America till the present time. The white man’s dehumanization of the black man to get a sense of superiority gives rise to various social conflicts and uprisings. The black intellectuals have been consistently battling for their humanity ever since. Ralph Ellison nimbly defends the blacks’humanity with his outstanding cultural vision, and his witty use of metaphors in language. He outdid the traditional literature focusing on moralistic propaganda by Mrs. Stowe, and the naturalistic protest fiction centering on hard-boiled remonstration and violence by Richard Wright, firstly by speaking highly of the 19th century classic works by such white writers as Melville, Faulkner and Mark Twain, who showed humanistic spirit affirming the blacks’humanity, and secondly by making use of the highly symbolic and subversive language both to represent negro’s humanity and whites’inhumanity, and more importantly by probing into the universal human nature by alluding to the Riddle of the Sphinx, which demonstrates, in a broad sense, the author’s humanistic concern for the living dilemma of the contemporary people and also his advocatory tendency to revive the humanistic spirit of some 19th century writers.The primary focus of the fourth chapter is the use of blues in Ralph Ellison fiction. Blues is the primitive form of jazz, and it witnesses the jagged grain of the blacks’experience in the United States, and so it is spiritually interwoven with Ralph Ellison’s literary writing. People in adversity may transform the transcendental ambience which classic blues songs and blues singers deliver into the fabric of their optimistic existence. Ralph Ellison is the first to realize the literary potential of blues and theorized its expressiveness and life philosophy with eloquent and indelible concision, and to transform it into an act of literature with such originality that he made a tremendous success in the history of African American literature. Ellison’s achievement lies in his bringing a shift from naturalistic tendency of protest literary writing to a new modernist style, focusing on American culture. This chapter contains a probing discussion of how Ralph Ellison derived his philosophical and expressionistic inspiration from the blues and how Ellison juxtaposes individual disaster with blues code, so as to reveal Ellison’s multiple modes of profound thinking and speaking concerning racial problems.Chapter Five is devoted first to an elaboration of the relevance and difference of Richard Wright’s naturalistic protest fiction from the American mainstream naturalistic writing represented by Theodore Dreiser, with an objective analysis of Richard Wight’s literary talents and literary contribution to African American literature; and then, the writer moves on to discuss Ralph Ellison’s transcendence of Richard Wright by his stepping around and by traces of modernism and post-modernism in his literary writing, literary criticism and cultural review.In the last chapter, traits of post-modernism and cultural studies in Ralph Ellison’s texts are discussed at length with the help of Jacques Derrida’s“White Myth”and Roland Barthes’“Demystification”in order to touch upon two core ideas:One is Ralph Ellison’s anatomy of black/ white binary opposition in Western myth and rites, and the other is ancestral presence in Ellison’s writing, so as to bring to light his literary originality and foreknowledge. Invisibility, as a central metaphor in Invisible Man, is a stimulation Ellison got from his deep brooding of Negro culture and its value, and also marks a shift from Richard Wright’s naturalistic protest fiction to modern aesthetic novels and to post-modern novels with subversive features. The new direction is signified by Ellison’s deconstruction of binary opposition in Europe and social rituals in Deep South of America. Ralph Ellison’s continuing belief in American amalgamation when“ethnic integrity”overshadowed the“melting pot”as a cultural touchstone, and his rediscovery and reinterpretation of myth and ritual significantly represent his cultural vision in his literary writing, and also a persuasive rectification from the prevailing writing in sociological perspective, while ancestral presence in his writing conduces to the American racists’reexamining American identity and American culture, which helps to decode the genuine significance of the twisted meaning of“invisibility”.更多还原