“猴王”被生吃的跨文化意涵

The Cross-Cultural Meanings of the “Monkey King” being Consumed Alive

中英混合血统的当代英语作家毛翔青的处女作《猴王》因中国人处于权力中心而中葡混血儿主人公华莱士身处边缘的情境,颠覆了一般读者对海外华裔小说的期待。本文从《猴王》与《西游记》的互文性、中西文化的冲突、身份焦虑和自我分裂三方面入手,解读《猴王》故事跨文化情境中的身份危机和身份重建问题。本文认为,作者以生吃猴脑之异域风情为中心意象,是一个制造卖点的噱头;他通过以自己为原形的华莱士抛出了一种以偏概全的中国想象,庸俗地迎合了西方人中存在的模式化的中国认知。

The Monkey King （1978）by Timothy Mo, a contemporary English novelist of Sino-English parentage, destroys readers＇expectations of the novels by overseas Chinese by placing its Eurasian protagonist Wallace （of Sino-Portuguese parentage）at the periphery of Chinese society. Adopting such perspectives as the intertextuality between The Monkey King and The Journey to the West, the conflicts of Chinese and Western cultures and identity perplexity and split self, this article offers an interpretation of the identity crisis and reconstruction in a cross-cultural situation in The Monkey King. It argues that The Monkey King utilizes such exoticism as eating monkey brains alive as its central image and as a trick to entertain the Western reader and that Mo puts forward the figure of Wallace simply to convey his biased Chinese imagination, thus vulgarly catering to the stereotyped perception of China by some Westerners.