荒野性:论加拿大文学的生态想象构建

Wilderness: the Imaginary Construction of Ecology in Canadian Literature

加拿大文学中自然和荒野有着特殊的文化象征意义,加拿大的民族/国家身份构建也和自然空间有着密不可分的联系。荒野想象既包含了个体的经历,又是文化记忆和身份的隐喻。荒野文学体现了加拿大从殖民时期到后殖民主义时期转变过程中的超民族想象,而荒野动物想象更是构建加拿大文化象征的一种独特的文学体裁。荒野文学一方面呼应了世界文学范围内的生态和环境伦理思想、动物伦理的兴起,另一方面在文化寓言的深层内涵上折射出加拿大人的地方、民族、国家和社会想象,可谓世界文学舞台上的一枝奇葩。

Nature and wilderness play a special symbolic part in Canadian culture, and are often closely entwined with the construction of national identity and literary imagination. The Canadian imagination of the wilderness often embodies individual experiences combined with collective cultural memory, and it functions as an apt metaphor for national identity. Wilderness literature in Canada reflects a transformation from colonial literary imagination to a postcolonial transnationalism in contemporary Canadian writing, whereas the animal imagination, in particular, has contributed to the symbolic imagination of Canadian culture as a special literary genre. Wilderness literature rises as a response to the extensive environmental ethics and ecological concerns in the context of a global literature. On the other hand, it functions as a cultural allegory,and embodies the spatial, social, and national imagination of Canadian culture, hence a lustrous gem in world literature.