英雄神话与历史真相的结合——赞恩·格雷西部牛仔小说简评

The Integration of Hero Myths and Historical Truth:A Interpretation of Zane Grey's Western Cowboy Fictions

从20世纪初到20世纪30年代,美国西部小说家赞恩·格雷依托真实的美国社会历史,以西部牛仔为主人公完成了30余部西部牛仔小说的文学创作。格雷的作品在美国西部牛仔小说发展史上承上启下,既继承了20世纪初"文学牛仔"英雄形象的塑造传统,以模式化的方式展示了"文学牛仔"的浪漫传奇和侠肝义胆,从而持续推动了美国西部牛仔神话的形成;也通过对牧区战争、黑人牛仔、印第安人和现代牛仔形象的写实塑造,在间接反映"牧牛王国"发展真相的同时,为20世纪后半期西部牛仔小说从通俗走向严肃奠定了基础。

From the beginning of the 20th century to the 1930s, Grey,one of the representative writers of the western cowboy fictions ,completed more than 30 fictions relying on the real American social history and taking the western cowboys as the main characters.Grey's western cowboy fictions were the link between the past and the future in the history of American western cowboy fictions.They inherited the tradition of creating the heroic image of "literary cowboy" in the early 20th century in a patterned way, which continuously promoted the formation of American western cowboy myth.Meanwhile, black cowboys, Indians and modern Cowboys appeared either in the theme or in the protagonist's way in the fictions.This realistic writing feature not only indirectly reflected the development of the "cattle kingdom", but also laid a foundation for the western cowboy fictions in the second half of the 20th century to move from popularity to seriousness.