苏格兰的幽灵:苏格兰超自然文学中的历史

Ghosts of Scotland:Scottish Supernatural Literature as History

苏格兰文学经常借助超自然现象讲苏格兰的故事,其中的幽灵和闹鬼主题,再现了一个业已逝去、但能以文化形式被再次召回的苏格兰。本文旨在对比和探究《苏格兰高地古诗片段》和《灯塔》中的幽灵书写与历史再现。詹姆斯·麦克弗森《苏格兰高地古诗片段》中的幽灵书写,唤醒了一段古老的苏格兰历史,以此哀悼彼时的卡洛登战役,同时将詹姆斯党在此役的战败与英国现代文化相结合。相比之下,艾丽斯·汤普森的《灯塔》则以鬼故事的形式,揭露苏格兰参与奴隶贸易的历史。这一事实既难被现代人接受,也难被苏格兰文学史承认。

Scottish Literature frequently turns to the supernatural to tell the story of Scotland.The motif of ghosts and hauntings evokes a Scotland that is in the past but can return to be repossessed in cultural forms in the present.This essay explores two contrasting examples.James Macpherson’s Fragments of Ancient Poetry evokes an ancient Scottish past to mourn the much more recent Battle of Culloden,in which the Jacobite army was defeated,and to incorporate that loss into modern British culture.Alice Thompson’s Pharos,by contrast,uses the form of the ghost story to show how Scotland’s part in the slave trade cannot be easily absorbed into the modern world or acknowledged in the history of Scottish Literature.