“生命虚构叙事”多文本结构及其阐释意义——兼论与奈保尔有关的三个文本

Multitextuality in “Biofiction” and Cross-Reading as an Interpretive Strategy

作为当代英语小说界的新兴文类,"生命虚构叙事"兼具传记写实与小说虚构的双重特点。作品多以历史名人为对象,用小说笔法重写或改写人物生平。学界在论述这一文类形式特征时倾向于把它视为后现代历史小说或"新维多利亚文学"。但这两种文类定性均未涉及文类形式与读者关系的探究,故而本文指出,"生命虚构叙事"的文类特征不仅取决于某个文本单独显现的"后现代"或"历史纪实"属性,还取决于由多文本叙事方式构成的这一文本的独特性。这种独特性使得读者对于任何一个文本的阅读阐释受制于读者对某个"前文本"的已知经验,促使读者将当前的叙事文本与"前文本"进行"对照阅读"。文章以三个与奈保尔有关的文本为例子,阐述"生命虚构叙事"由不同作者构建的多文本关系,揭示这一文类对意义多样性阅读立场的期待。

As an increasingly popular segment of postmodern fiction,'biofiction' has drawn much critical attention due to its conscious juxtaposition of the biographical representation and the fictional re-writing of the subject. Informative as it surely is, this general perception of'biofiction'as rewriting of historical subjects and source texts may easily neglect the relationship between its formal features and their cognitive impact upon reception and interpretation.Focusing on multi-textuality as a defining generic feature of biofiction, this paper explicates the agency of reading activity, which is both structured by the intertextual construction of biofiction and the reader's knowledge of those'pretexts'from which the current story borrows in a selective way. For this way of thinking, genre features of biofiction are not intrinsic to any particular biofictional text but rather a product of interpretation. To exemplify this argument, the paper chooses three texts relating to the writing and re-writing of V. S. Naipaul, revealing their mutual dependence in terms of 'life writing'.