“双重束缚理论”与坡的替身小说

“Double Bind Theory” and Edgar Allan Poe’s Doppelganger Tales

替身小说是坡笔下不容忽视的亚文类,它们不仅展现出哥特文学的一个独特母题,更能够为心理学围绕无意识世界中的否定缺失找到一种"否定的回归"。英国人类学家格雷戈里·贝特森在其围绕精神分裂症以及动物行为所进行的研究当中,揭示了一种能够在病态逻辑与艺术想象之间实现对接耦合的"跨语境综合症",它将罗素眼中的"逻辑类型"混乱转化为操控精神分裂症患者的"双重束缚",并从中提炼出艺术的独特发生逻辑--字面信息的隐喻化。文章以这一理论框架为研究平台,通过给予坡的替身小说某种全景式观照,从人物心理与叙述结构这两大层面探讨替身美学的发生肌理。在此基础上,得出如下结论:替身现象既存在于文学作品的人物镜像关联之中,也会以巴赫金式的对话性逻辑呈现为显性情节与隐性进程所共同构建的叙述动力学;它不仅为当今西方学界的"表层阅读"流派提供了有效案例,更使得坡所一贯倡导的"秘密写作"获得了叙事学阐释的绝佳模型。

The doppelg?nger tales make a significant subgenre in Poe’s fictional sphere, not only exemplifying a unique motif of gothic literature, but also overcoming by "the return of negation" the psychological inability of the unconscious to say "no." In his studies of schizophrenia and animal behavior, Gregory Bateson, a British anthropologist, detected a sort of "transcontextual syndrome," which may establish a coupling between morbid logic and artistic creativity, hence transforming the disorder of Bertrand Russell’s"logical types" into the "double bind" that usually controls patients of schizophrenia, and generating a logic of unique artistic creation--the literal metaphoricalization. This article, by using the framework of Bateson’s "double bind theory" as a platform for my study, attempts to present a panoramic view of Poe’s doppelg?nger tales and explore the genesis of the doppelg?nger aesthetics in light of characters’ psychology and narrative structure. My conclusion is that the doppelg?nger phenomenon not only exists in the interface between literary characters and their mirrored counterparts, but also displays itself in the narrative dynamics driven by a Bakhtinian dialogic nexus between overt plot and covert progression. On the one hand, it offers the "surface reading" school an effective case in point and, on the other, creates a perfect model of narratological interpretation for the "secret writing" that Poe had always promoted.