后现代自传体小说——《女勇士》的体裁论争与界定探析

The Postmodern Autobiographic Fiction: A Debate on the Genre of The Woman Warrior and an Analysis of the Definition

汤亭亭的《女勇士》自1976年出版以来引起了美国学界的一场持续、激烈的体裁辩论:关于这部作品是自传、小说、自传体小说,还是后现代自传,评论家众说纷纭。本文借助叙事交流模式,聚焦文本真实作者、隐含作者、叙事者、主人公和真实读者的动态关系,深度探析《女勇士》体裁纷争这一现象产生的根本原因,并以自传、自传体小说和后现代自传体小说的叙事特征为依据,管窥文本对传统自传体小说叙事的"循规"和"逾规",据此提出《女勇士》是一部后现代自传体小说,旨在拓宽后现代文学体裁的研究视野。

Since its publication in 1976,The Woman Warrior,by Maxine Hong Kingston,has been causing a sustained and heated debate about its genre in the American world of letters,with critics arguing about whether it is an autobiography,or a fiction,or an autobiographic novel or a postmodern autobiography.Based on the mode of narrative communications,this paper focuses on the dynamic relationship between the real author,the hidden author,the narrator,the protagonist and the real reader in analysing the root cause of this debate surrounding The Woman Warrior,apart fromgaining peeps into the following or breaking of the rules in the traditional autobiographic narration,based on the narrative features of autobiography,autobiographic fiction and postmodern autobiographic fiction,with the conclusion that the novel is a postmodern autobiographic novel,in an effort to expand the vision of research on the postmodern literary genre.