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忏悔一赎罪:《赎罪》与《大浴女》主题比较研究

Confession and Atonement: A Comparative Study on the Theme of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Tie Ning’s Da Yu Nv

【作者】 唐春华

【导师】 费小平; 宁梅;

【作者基本信息】 贵州大学 , 英语语言文学, 2009, 硕士

【摘要】 伊恩·麦克尤恩是英国和西方国家最有影响和最有争议的英国当代作家之一。他的小说《赎罪》分别获得过布克奖提名(2001)、史密斯文学奖(2002)、国家图书评论小说奖(National Book Critics’Circle Fiction Award,2003)、洛杉矶时报小说奖(Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction,2003)和圣地亚哥欧洲小说奖(the Santiago Prize for the European Novel,2004)。该小说讲述了一个在二战时期沉溺于写作、想象力及其活跃的小女孩布里奥尼错误地指控女清洁工儿子罗比强奸她表妹罗拉的故事。为此她用了近六十年的时间来为自己的伪证赎罪。铁凝是现任中国作协主席,她的《大浴女》被列为茅盾文学奖提名名单。这部小说把背景选定在文化大革命时期,讲述了一个未成年的小女孩尹小跳和二妹尹小帆看着她们两岁的小妹尹小荃走进没盖盖子的井里而不施救的故事。与布里奥尼一样,尹小跳在以后的日子里一直为自己儿时所犯的错误进行忏悔,并积极寻求救赎之路。从故事情节上看两部小说存在着明显的相似之处,从主题上看,两部小说都涉及到忏悔与救赎的主题。但目前为止,国内外还没有出现过比较文学意义上的研究。“忏悔—救赎”主题起源于基督教的元典《圣经》,与人性密切相关。在西方,人们普遍认为人生而有罪,只有全能的上帝才能拯救人类,于是基督徒把人类救赎之路形象地比喻为无限上升的螺旋式天梯,加拿大学者用U字总结了《圣经》中“犯罪-忏悔-救赎”的叙事模式;在中国,从战国时代以来,人之初性本善的理论就一直占主导地位,随着佛教的传入,有了“放下屠刀,立地成佛”的顿悟式忏悔。无论是西方的U型结构还是中国的顿悟式,“忏悔—救赎”主题都负载着人类的罪恶,让人在痛苦的自我折磨中煎熬,又在痛苦中获得灵魂的净化,重新获得自我。它是个人的一种自觉意识,也是一个民族的忧患意识。尽管这一主题在情感和行为等方面是相近的,但因英中两国人民有不同的生存环境、生活方式、历史传统、民族信仰和审美思维,两个民族对这个主题的体验和表达存在差异。然而,迄今为止,国内还没有学者运用比较文学的原理,从文化人类学角度结合两个异国文本对“忏悔—救赎”这个主题进行过系统的比较和研究。鉴于此,本论文在比较文学视野下,在对英中两国“忏悔—救赎”文学材料做精心梳理的基础上,本着“寻找相似性、追求异质性”的原则,运用比较文学平行研究的方法和相应的文学批评理论,围绕“恶—罪—罚—赎”的叙事模式,比较伊恩·麦克尤恩的《赎罪》和铁凝的《大浴女》中“仟悔—救赎”主题表达上的共性和差异。本文具体从以下五个部分展开论述:第一部分主要简单介绍《赎罪》和《大浴女》的主要内容和回顾评论界对两部小说的主要评论,接着简要论述两部小说的可比性,之后提出作者对本论文的设想和方法,最后概述本论文的研究意义。第二部分主要从两个文本的叙事大背景来阐述社会的罪恶。本章首先论述了父辈作为第二次世界大战和文化大革命这两场灾难的参与者对两位作者的直接影响,然后结合具体的两个文本证明两作者对这两场灾难的思考和质问,之后利用Pollefeyt博士的恶魔化—普泛化—护罪理论来分析参与者的心理,指出这些参与者既是受害者又是犯罪者,且最重要的是,他们对此毫无意识,进而揭示隐藏在个人崇拜后更深的集体无意识罪恶行为,即本主题罪恶的起源。第三部分主要阐述了两部小说中主人公的犯罪进程。本章首先运用Bowen的家庭系统理论将社会与家庭连接起来,强调社会对家庭的影响,然后从父亲入手,进而到母亲,最后到女儿,结合两文本中的场景描写、事件链分析了生长于功能失调家庭的未成年女孩在失去家长监护和约束状态下从思想上到行动上的犯罪进程。第四部分结合中西方不同的“救赎”模式和两位无神论作者对罪恶的观点,比照文本中两位女主角的结局,阐述了布里奥尼和尹小跳犯罪后各自不同的忏悔方式和救赎路线。同时,阐明了导致这种结局差异的文化根由。第五部分主要对全文进行了总结,同时指出本文作者在写作过程中的局限性及将来力图尝试研究的问题。

【Abstract】 Ian McEwan is one of the most influential and controversial writers in Britain and in Western countries.His fiction,Atonement,has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction(2001),received the WH Smith Literary Award(2002),National Book Critics’ Circle Fiction Award(2003),Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003),and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel(2004).In the fiction,Briony, an underage girl with overactive imagination,is indulged in writing and thinks that the world is just so.As a result,she,with false testimony,accuses Robbie,the son of a cleaner,of rapist.In the rest of her life Briony atones for her crime and its consequences.Tie Ning,the third president of Chinese Writers’ Association,is an original and creative writer.Her Fiction,The Bathing Girls,has been shortlisted for the sixth Mao Dun Literary Award.Tie Ning places the setting of the fiction in the Cultural Revolution.In the setting she tells a story about the two immature girls—Yin Xiaotiao and Yin Xiaofan—who watch their two-year-old younger sister Yin Xiaoquan staggering into a well and do nothing to save her life.Like Briony,the two sisters atone for their crime and its consequences over the course of three decades. Obviously,there are similarities between the two fictions in plot and theme.However, no comparative study on the theme of confession and atonement has been taken. Therefore,it is necessary to develop the present study on the two fictions from the perspective of confession and atonement.The theme of confession and atonement is originated from Bible,the Christian canon;it is closely related to the human nature.In Western countries,it is generally believed that the human beings are evil at birth,and they can be saved only by God, thus Christianity figuratively compares human salvation to Jacob’s ladder which is endlessly extending upward to the Paradise.The Canadian scholar Northrop Frye summarizes the narrative model as "sin-confession-atonement" and names it "U-structure".In China,since the Warring States,the theory of human beings’ Good Nature at Birth is still dominant.With the introduction of Buddhism,there appears the Sudden Enlightenment way of confession and atonement,believing that "everyone can drop his or her cleaver and become a Buddha—achieve salvation as soon as he or she gives up evil".Loading with human evil,the theme of confession and atonement in Western countries and in China tortures human beings and purifies their souls.It is a personal self-consciousness,and a national sense of unexpected sufferings.Though emotionally and behaviorally similar,British and Chinese people have their own experiences and expressions for this theme,for they are dissimilar in their living surroundings,life styles,native conventions,and national beliefs.In practice,no Chinese scholars have ever made a comparative study on the theme at the level of heterogeneous texts from the perspectives of comparative literature and cultural anthropology.Therefore,the thesis,followed by the method of parallel study of comparative literature and the path of "evil-sin-atonement",will focus on the similar and different expressions in the shared theme in Atonement and The Bathing Girls from the point view of comparative literature and cultural anthropology.The thesis consists of five chapters as follows:Chapter one is the brief introduction of the two fictions,the survey of the critical responses to the Atonement and The Bathing Girls,and brief assumptions as well as methodologies of this thesis,and finally the seeking for the comparability of the two fictions and the contributions of the thesis.Chapter two is the analysis of the settings of the two fictions and of the evil of the society.Influenced by their fathers,the two writers question WWⅡand the Cultural Revolution respectively and transfer their own reflections on the two man-made disasters into their fictions.Followed by Dr.Pollefeyt’s theory on diabolicisation,banalization,and apology of evil,the chapter reveals the fact that the participators of WWⅡand the Cultural Revolution are the victims as well as the killers.What is important is the unconsciously collective violence hidden in the two disasters.Chapter three is the analysis of the crime process of the two heroines. According to Bowen’s Family Systems Theory,the chapter connects the evil of society with the dysfunction of family,and then illustrates the negative influence on the immature girls by the absence of fathers,the weakness of the mothers,and the vulnerability of siblings.On the basis of the analysis,the origin of the evil is disclosed that the dysfunction of the two families makes Briony expand her desire for manipulation and Yin Xiaotiao revenge her mother in the name of her father.Related to the narrative model of the theme in Western countries and in China, chapter four is the comparison of the ends of the two protagonists and the illustration of Briony’s and Yin Xiaotiao’s different paths of atonement.Finally this part comes to a conclusion that Briony is an unforgiven sinner while Yin Xiaotiao becomes a forgivable sinner due to the Western evil-natured theory and China’s good-natured theory.Chapter five is the conclusion.It sums up the main ideas discussed above and states the limitations in the process of writing the thesis and the questions to be further researched.

  • 【网络出版投稿人】 贵州大学
  • 【网络出版年期】2011年 S1期
  • 【分类号】I0-03;I106.4
  • 【被引频次】1
  • 【下载频次】331
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