后现代语境中的现代性回归——《福楼拜的鹦鹉》中行动与动机关系的弱化

Restoration of Modernity in the Postmodern Context—The Weakening of the Relationship between Action and Motivation in Flaubert's Parrot

当前对《福楼拜的鹦鹉》的研究多借助后现代主义文学主张,较少旁及其他角度。鉴于此,本文拟运用现代主义文学的相关理论及尼采有关"记忆"的观点来弥合后现代主义视角下《福楼拜的鹦鹉》与现代主义文学之间产生的代际裂隙。具体来讲,小说实际上是依托后现代主义语境指涉了现代主义文学的重要议题——小说主人公行动与动机之间关系的弱化。这一点在作品的双重叙事结构(表层叙事与深层叙事)中均有体现。它使文本兼具虚构和真实两种属性,叙述者的感情也被悬置于某种无所归属的"中间状态"。两者之间关系弱化的重要原因在于无论是在表层叙事还是在深层叙事中,叙述者面对复杂的符号体系时都无法拣择行动与动机之间介入的大量记忆。小说揭示了行动在记忆的干扰下所具有的可能性,行动不一定必然与动机相一致。从这个角度讲,《福楼拜的鹦鹉》是以后现代主义的姿态向现代主义文学的回归。由此本文揭示出小说在后现代语境下对现代主义文学传统的继承。

At present, the interpretation of Flaubert's Parrot is, on many occasions, conducted from the perspective of postmodern theories, and rarely involves other literary critical methods, which falls short of capturing the genuine theme of the novel. Thus, in the present paper, the theories of modernist literature and those of Nietzsche's are cited to bridge the gap between Flaubert's Parrot and the modernist novels. After close scrutiny, we can find that it is far from thorough to classify Flaubert's Parrot into the postmodern literature. In fact, the postmodern narrative strategies are employed to indicate one of the major themes in modernist novels, namely the weakening of the relationship between action and motivation, which can be traced in the double narrative structure of the novel, that is to say, the surface narrative structure and the deep narrative structure. On the formal level, the weakening endows the novel with the genre of both fiction and non-fiction and such a genre is one of the core concepts in Virginia Woolf's literary notions. At the same time, the emotional status of the hero is flung into something like limbo. The weakening is not unexpected when we take into account the mixed memories that tangle up in a quite complex semiotic system. To be more specific, neither in the surface narrative structure nor in the deep narrative structure can the narrator distinguish such complex and bewildering memories and thus adopt the reasonable action based on corresponding motivation. In summary, Flaubert's Parrot exposes the intrusion of memory into the relationship between action and motivation. The intrusion randomizes the development of action, and action is occasionally(and also more often than not) inconsistent with motivation. It may not be a risk to conclude that Flaubert's Parrot belongs to the modernist works, with the disguise of postmodernism. In this way, the present paper reveals that the tradition of modernist literature is inherited in Flaubert's Parrot under the postmodern circumstances.