文类、读者与后现代小说

Genre,Reader,and Postmodernist Fiction

本文旨在探讨文类与读者的关系,以及后现代小说运用通俗文类的原因。由于文类建立在习俗之上,故而它与习俗紧密联系在一起,而习俗的存在则触发了读者对文本的期待,所以文类的确认在读者的阅读中起了非常重要的作用。后现代小说家在借用通俗文类的同时,必定还颠覆它,以求达到"篇篇怪"。这样做的结果是:一则可以依旧吸引读者,成为畅销书,作者可以赚到钱;二则可以吸引大学教授的眼球,作者可以声名大振;三则还可以促进这一文类的发展。此所谓一箭三雕,于公于私于文学都有利,如此,何乐而不为呢?

This paper explores the relationship between genre and reader,and the reasons for the employment of popular genres in postmodernist fiction.As genre is based on its conventions and conventions excite reader's expectations, acknowledgement of genre plays an important role in the reader's reading. While employing a popular genre in their fiction,postmodernist writers subvert it so as to'make it strange'.Consequently,the novel is more likely to become a best-seller and therefore more profitable as it draws the common readers;the novel may also attract the attention of university professors,who have the final say over the intellectual prestige of the novelist and the artistic merit of the novel;and the genre may develop as subversion means that something new is added and something old omitted,thus the possibility of a sub-genre.