论保罗·奥斯特《密室中的旅行》的三重语言观

Three Viewpoints of Language in Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium

美国文论家杰姆逊从语言符号入手来分析现实主义、现代主义与后现代主义三个文化阶段,认为现实主义阶段语言表现为能指、所指与参指三者的统一,现代主义阶段语言则表现为能指与所指的统一,而后现代主义阶段语言只剩下自动的能指。保罗.奥斯特的小说《密室中的旅行》同时包含了这三种语言观,读者对主人公布兰克这一语言符号意义的追寻也从寻找外在世界的参指,退后到小说文本中它的所指,并最终迷失在小说无穷循环的能指链条中。杰姆逊与奥斯特在揭示语言的实质方面有着殊途同归的旨趣。

Fredric Jameson,the American literary critic,analyzes realism,modernism and postmodernism in terms of language.He argues that language represents the unification of signifier,signified and referent in the realistic stage,the combination of signifier and signified in the modernistic stage and only the meaningless signifier in the postmodern stage.This mode finds full expression in Paul Auster's Travels in the Scriptorium,in which readers' first attempt to seek Mr Blank's identity in the real word fails,their second attempt to find his identity in the fictional world also fails,and they finally get lost in the circulatory chain of signifiers.Jameson and Auster arrive at the same conclusion on the essence of language from different ways.