《拓荒者》中的纽约地方书写与美国边疆空间生产

New York Local Narrative in The Pioneers and the Production of Frontier Territory in the United States

小说《拓荒者》描写了美国独立革命后纽约州小镇在四十年间的发展历程,作者赋予城镇空间以政治含义,用纽约州地方区域的繁荣景象折射美国推翻英国苛政、建立共和政体后所取得的成就,赞颂了开拓者在边疆小镇所进行的领土实践。本文从国家领土空间生产视角解读《拓荒者》,结合小说创作历史背景考察作者独特的边疆城镇空间叙述特点,分析美国在签署《巴黎条约》之后几十年间国家领域主体性建构过程的内在机理,试图揭示美国建国后密西西比河以东边疆领土的开发动因、土地政策运作方式和结果。

The novel The Pioneers depicts the development of a town in New York in the four decades after the American Revolution. The writer endows the town space with political meanings. And he uses the prosperity of the New York area to reflect the achievements of the republican government of the United States after its overthrow of the British oppression, extolling the territory practice of the pioneers in the frontier town. This article analyses the novel The Pioneers from the perspective of the production of the national territory, observing the features of the writer＇s unique local narrative about the frontier cities and towns in the historical context. It probes into the implicit mechanism of how the national sovereignty was established in the frontier in the decades after the signing of the Paris Treaty, and endeavors to discover the causes, the policy operation methods and the result of the development of the American frontier in the area to the east of Mississippi after the American Revolution.