朝圣:英国旅行文学的精神内核

Pilgrimage:The Spiritual Nucleus of English Travel Literature

14—17世纪,以《曼德维尔游记》、《坎特伯雷故事集》和《天路历程》为代表的三个朝圣文本,建构了一个从西方到东方、从本土到异域、从内心世界到外部世界的立体的朝圣—旅行空间。在这个空间中,东方的圣地与异域的奇迹互相并置,基督教的世界观与异教的信仰互为镜像,虔诚的宗教信念与粗鄙的世俗欲望互相交织,形成一个源远流长的叙事传统。近代英国的旅行文学正是在这个朝圣传统的影响下逐渐脱颖而出,形成自己的空间想象、主体性意识、跨文化交往原则,以及相应的叙事策略和结构模式的。从这个意义上说,朝圣文学是英国乃至欧洲旅行文学之精神内核。

Three literary texts of pilgrimage from the 14th to the 17th century,namely The Travels of Sir John Mandeville,The Canterbury Tales and The Pilgrim＇s Progress,built a three-dimensional space of pilgrimage-travel in English literature.These three texts span from the West to the East,from the domestic to the exotic and from the interior to the exterior.They started a long narrative tradition where the Holy Land and alien miracles coexist,the Christian worldview and the pagan beliefs mirror each other,and the pious religious faith and the low profane desires intertwine.It is this tradition of British pilgrimage literature that exerted influence on and gave impetus to the rise of modern English travel literature with the gradual formation of its space imagination,subject consciousness,principles of cross-cultural communication and correspondingly its narrative strategies and structural patterns.In this sense,the pilgrimage literature may be considered the spiritual nucleus of English and European travel literature.