建构英国小说从现实主义向现代主义转变的伦理路径--评霍兰德的《小说伦理学：晚期维多利亚小说中的叙事好客》

Tracting the Ethical Path of Transition from Realism to Modernism: A Review of Hollander's Narrative Hospitality in Late Victorian Fiction: Novel Ethics

蕾切尔·霍兰德的《小说伦理学:晚期维多利亚小说中的叙事好客》以列维纳斯的好客伦理学为研究视角,重点分析了几部英国晚期维多利亚现实主义小说在主题和形式上所表现出的向现代主义过渡的特征,试图从伦理批评的角度对这种转变做出解释。霍兰德认为,随着英国社会在19世纪末陷入重重危机,以同情为基础的现实主义小说伦理观逐渐解体,并被现代主义的好客伦理观所取代。后者承认知识的限度,并尊重现实的不确定性。不同的小说伦理观产生了不同的叙事主题和形式,折射出作家在小说如何发挥伦理功能这个问题上的思考。本书对于我们重新认识现实主义和现代主义小说的伦理取向、以及小说的伦理责任等问题均有很好的启发。

In Narrative Hospitality in Late Victorian Fiction： Novel Ethics, Rachel Hollander takes inspiration from Levinasian ethics of alterity into her analysis of several late Victorian realist fictions, particularly their transitional features in subjects and narrative forms, attempting to give an ethical interpretation of the transition from realism to modernism. She argues that, with the Empire being caught in serious crises at the end of the 19th century, the sympathy-based novel ethics of realism gradually gave way to the modemist novel ethics of hospitality which acknowledges the limits of knowledge and values of uncertainty. Different novel ethics account for different subjects and narrative forms, which reflects the novelists＇ different approaches to novel＇s ethical functions. The book can be very helpful for us to reconsider the ethical orientations of realist and modemist novels, as well as the ethical responsibility of novel.