莎士比亚戏剧人物的当代言说——评欧文新作《集于一身》

Shakespeare's Characters'Contemporary Speeches:An Interpretation of John Irving’s In One Person

美国当代畅销书作家约翰·欧文的新作《集于一身》中出现的大量莎士比亚戏剧中的人物对白与小说人物针对莎剧的评论,充分体现了小说的莎剧渊源。对该小说的解读可以从莎剧中的三个人物出发,即《理查二世》中的主人公理查二世、《暴风雨》中的精灵爱丽儿以及《威尼斯商人》中的夏洛克。借助这三个人物,欧文在小说中展现了"性的局外人"们的边缘化生活,提出了性别身份的可变性观点,并驳斥了社会对"性的局外人"的不宽容态度。作为莎剧在新时代的阐释的典范,《集于一身》证实了莎剧作为文学经典所具有的跨时代的价值和意义,进而引发我们对文学经典的现代阐释问题的思考。

Numerous dialogues,originating from or commenting on Shakespeare's plays,can be found in the American contemporary bestselling author John Irving's new novel In One Person, which fully demonstrates the novel's inheritance from Shakespeare.To interpret the novel,we can start from three characters in Shakespeare's plays,namely Richard II,Ariel in The Tempest,and Shylock in Merchant of Venice.With these three characters,Irving demonstrates the marginalized life of'Sexual Outsiders'in the novel,proposes the variability of gender identities,and refutes the society's intolerance to'Sexual outsiders'.As a paradigm of contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare,In One Person substantiates Shakespeare's time-transcending value and significance and provokes our thinking on literary classics'modern interpretation.