从艾丽丝·门罗看加拿大文学——罗伯特·撒克教授访谈录(英文)

Alice Munro and Canadian Literature: An Interview with Professor Robert Thacker

罗伯特·撒克教授是美国纽约州圣劳伦斯大学英语教授、当代著名文学评论家,曾任美国西部文学研究协会主席、美国加拿大研究协会会刊《美国的加拿大研究评论》主编,主要研究艾丽丝·门罗、维拉·凯瑟以及加拿大—美国文学与文化比较研究,著有《北美大草原的事实和文学想象》(1989)、《艾丽丝·门罗:书写她的生活》(2005, 2011) 等专著。2012 年,笔者获"加拿大研究特别奖"资助在加拿大访学期间,受《外国文学研究》编辑部委托,对撒克教授进行了专访。在这篇访谈录中,撒克教授从其传记《艾丽丝·门罗:书写她的生活》入手,对门罗小说的叙述技巧、地域母题及艺术美学等问题作出了阐释,表达了对加拿大文学中的安大略传统与历史关注。对于加拿大文学的民族文学身份问题,撒克教授指出,要防止过于强调意识形态的批评倾向,避免以狭隘的民族主义立场对待加拿大文学与美国文学的关系。

Robert Thacker is Charles A. Dana Professor of Canadian Studies and English at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. He has published extensively on Alice Munro, Willa Cather, and Canada-U.S. literary and cultural comparisons. As former president of the Western Literature Association, he is editor of The American Review of Canadian Studies, and many books in this field, as well as author of books including The Great Prairie Fact and Literary Imagination （1989） and Alice Munro： Writing Her Lives （2005, 2011）. Zhou Yi interviewed Professor Thacker on behalf of Foreign Literature Studies in 2012. In this interview, Professor Thacker, starting with a discussion about his much-acclaimed biography, Alice Munro： Writing Her Lives, provides a profound analysis of Munro＇s narrative techniques, her leitmotif of place and artistic aesthetics. Based on the discussion of Munro＇s writing, Professor Thacker also answers questions about the Ontario tradition of Canadian literature, and its sense of history. He is especially wary of the ideological tendency that tries to pigeonhole Canadian literature into national literature framework. Talking about the relationship between Canadian literature and American literature, he dismisses the radical nationalist standpoint by emphasizing the fact that the two countries share a single North American physiographic region.