从“历史编撰元小说”的角度看《法国中尉的女人》

An Analysis of The French Lieutenant's Woman with the Theory of Historiographic Metafiction

本文从"历史编撰元小说"的角度解读《法国中尉的女人》,认为其既具有元小说自我指涉的特征,又悖谬地指向了外在的历史现实,而其"自指性"不仅没有削弱、反倒增强了文本对社会历史的"它指"功能。小说通过自揭虚构等元小说技巧,在将历史作为故事来讲的过程中凸出了历史的虚构性和叙述性,进而揭露了"客观"、"真实"的历史文本中隐藏的叙事逻辑和意识形态,揭露了历史甚至我们生活的现实世界,是怎样按照话语霸权被虚构的。作为"历史编撰元小说",《法国中尉的女人》不再是激进元小说式的自我指涉、自我沉醉、脱离历史、无关现实,而是在自我意识的掩盖下强烈地指向了社会权力话语的运作和意识形态对话。

This article analyzes The French Lieutenant＇ s Woman with the theory of historiographw metafiction. The present author holds that this text has both self-reference of metafiction and the reference to exterior hisrory and reality, and that the former has not not only weakened but also strengthened the latter. Employing the metafiction technique of exposing its own fictionality, the novel gives prominence to the fictionality and narrativity of history in the process of telling history as a story, and discloses the narrative logic and ideology in the ＂objective＂, ＂real＂ history text; furthermore, it reveals how the history and the real world are fictionalized according to discourse hegemony. As a historiographic metafiction, the novel no longer self-refers, self-indulges or disengages itself from history and reality as radical metafiction. It refers to the operation of the discourse of social power and the ideological dialogue under the cover of self-consciousness.