重构美国南方历史——《我弥留之际》之新历史主义解读

Reconstructing the History of the South of the United States of America:A New Historicist Interpretation of As I Lay Dying

《我弥留之际》是福克纳的代表作之一,通过描写一个贫穷的白人佃农家庭所遭遇的不幸与离散来寓意美国南方乡村在20世纪初所遭遇的转型阵痛。从这个意义上说,福克纳通过小说构建了他自己的南方历史,实现了文本与历史的互动。据此,本文通过新历史主义的两个重要概念,“历史的文本性”和“文本的历史性”对小说进行解读,由此也可以一窥福克纳对于美国南方历史的深刻反思,对人类命运的终极关怀。

As I Lay Dying,one of the masterpieces written by William Faulkner,unfolds the degeneration and disintegration of a poor white peasant family,allegorizing the collective upheaval of the rural life in the south in the early twentieth century.In this way,Faulkner constructs a narration of his own through literature and realizes the interactions between text and historical context.This paper is intended to probe the novel through two critical concepts in New Historicism studies:“the texuality of history”and“the historicity of text”,which may help us to better understand Faulkner’s ideology towards the destiny of humanity,as well as the constant predicament of the southern history of America.