历史事件的小说再现——以《奈特·特纳的自白》为例

Fictional Representation of Historical Events: A Case Study of The Confessions of Nat Turner

现代思潮和语言哲学的发展对历史的再现功能提出质疑和挑战,历史事件不断地被解读,从而建构了不同的历史事实,该解读和建构过程亦被称为历史事件的情节化解释。小说《奈特·特纳的自白》从人性的角度,将美国历史上奈特·特纳黑奴起义事件进行情节化处理,艺术地再现美国南北战争前的时代特征和社会风貌,重塑起义领导者及主要参与者的人物形象,诠释该历史事件的深刻寓意,建构不同的历史真实。作为虚构叙事,《奈特·特纳的自白》修正既定的历史叙事,质疑代表官方宏大历史叙事的真实性,有效地对抗官方权力话语的制衡力量,还原了另一个版本的历史真实。因此,被看作边缘之声的小说叙事参与了一个民族历史文化记忆的建构。

The latest developments of modern philosophy and language philosophy cast severe doubt on and pose challenges to the representational function of history. Actually historical events have incessantly been explained and different versions of truth about these events have been constructed. The process of explaining and constructing is called the explanation of historical events by emplotment. From the perspective of human nature,the novel,The Confessions of Nat Turner,through explaining the historical event,the Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion,in American history by emplotment,represents the zeitgeist of the antebellum American South,recasts the images of the leader and major participants of the rebellion,unravels the profundity of the import of the event,and reconstructs a different version of the historical truth about the event. As fictional narrative,The Confessions of Nat Turner revises the accepted historical narrative,questions the facticity of the official grand narrative,thus effectively challenges the power discourse of the authorities,and restores an alternative version of historical truth about the event. In so doing,fiction as marginal narrative is enabled to partake of constructing the national cultural memory.