《格列佛游记》中的视觉隐喻与爱尔兰问题

Visual Metaphors and the Irish Problem in Gulliver's Travels

格列佛对失明的焦虑让我们关注斯威夫特对"肉眼"和"心眼"的区分。斯威夫特把生理眼光从理性认知的视觉修辞中剥离出来,否定视觉相对于其他感官的优越性,质疑"眼见为实"的真实性,藉此破坏殖民话语自我合法化的基础并揭露了英国游记(考察报告)对爱尔兰"生蛮"的他者化叙述。在斯威夫特看来,"客观"叙述下掩盖的冷漠与殖民者对殖民地人民苦难的"视而不见"都是"人性弱点"的体现,更是一种"道德败坏"。

Gulliver's anxieties about his eyes draw our attention to Jonathan Swift's clear division between "corporeal eyes",which are not more powerful than other sense organs and "intellectual eyes",which metaphorically suggest eyes' privileged connection with mind.This division,with its challenge to Enlightenment ocularcentrism,enables Swift to problematize the colonial rhetoric of "eyewitnessing"and to expose the "Othering"of Ireland in English travel narratives.For Swift,Dean of St.Patrick,the indifference behind the "objective"and objectifying eye of the traveler,just like the blind eye that English governors turn to the Irish,is nothing but a result of "the frailty and corruption of humankind".