“生存还是毁灭,这是一个值得考虑的问题”——评笛福小说主人公的生存意识

‘Tobe,or Not to be——That is the Question’:Reading of Survival Consciousness in Defoe's Novels

在英国文学史上,丹尼尔.笛福作为现代小说的先驱是个不争的事实,《鲁滨逊漂流记》的发表标志着小说创作的开始。笛福的小说创作风格独树一帜,虽然后来批评家认为他的创作呆板、语言模糊、结构松散、缺乏色彩。尽管存在着缺点,但他能够从平淡无稽的语言中挖掘深意,善于把流浪冒险故事的叙述与意识形态说教结合起来,从而对人性进行剖析。他小说的一个重要主题是探讨人类生存意识,这个话题即便在今天也是具有重要讨论价值的。

It is a commonplace familiar to all students of English Literature that the novel began in 1719 with the publication of Daniel Defoe＇ s Robinson Crusoe. Crucial to the effect of all Defoe＇ s fiction is his highly individual manner of writing. His style is sometimes dismissed as dull, badly referential, lacking in color and texture. Nevertheless, he was able to squeeze out a remarkable wealth of implication from his penurious stock language. As a good story teller, he is good at turning his stories into a mixture of adventure story and ideological eonanentary on human nature. And the major theme of his adventure stories is survival consciousness, which is the virtue of human kind even in modern civilization.