《教授之屋》中的空间书写

Spatial Narrative in The Professor's House

薇拉·凯瑟的小说《教授之屋》是一部具有很强空间写作风格的作品。小说主要通过并置、叙述视角等叙事手法将主人公圣彼得教授置于旧屋、新屋和蓝方山三个不同空间中,展示身处失衡世界中教授的"两个自我"的激烈冲突和凯瑟对当时美国社会深层文化的忧虑与思考。运用加布里埃尔·佐伦的叙事空间理论,从地形学空间、时空体空间及文本空间三个层次解读小说《教授之屋》中的空间叙事,有助于进一步探讨空间叙事对读者构建空间阅读体验推动作用和对小说主题的表现意义。

Willa Cather's novel,The Professor's House,is a work with strong spatiality.Cather's adoption of the narrative techniques such as juxtaposition and the perspectival structure and the creation of three different spaces—the old house,the new house and the Blue Mesa help to display the intense conflicts between the protagonist Professor St.Peter's two selves in the imbalanced world and Cather's concern and profound reflection of American culture.Adopting Gabriel Zoran's model of narrative spaces as theoretical framework,this paper explores the spatial narrative in The Professor's House from three perspectives,namely,topographical structures,chronotropic structure and textual structure.It explores the roles the spatial narrative plays in providing readers insights into the novel and revealing the themes of the novel as well.