英国18世纪罪犯传记概观:叙事类型与研究范式

A Survey of 18th-Century British Criminal Biographies:Narrative Paradigms and Critical Approaches

18世纪英国罪犯传记虽然在形式和内容上都有高度模式化倾向,但作为一种风格鲜明的通俗文学体裁,它们既是那个时代的文化症候,反映了某种社会焦虑,又以一定的方式参与和影响着那个时代的文化、道德、政治话语构建。本文主要梳理了罪犯传记的四种研究范式,虽然它们基本都沿用了把对象历史化、语境化的研究思路,但对罪犯传记的文化价值和社会功能给出了不同评价。这有助于我们思考解读18世纪罪犯传记,同时也为英国文学研究开辟一片新的领域。

Though highly stereotyped in content and form,the 18th-century British criminal biography as a popular literary genre is deeply embedded in its social background. This essay reviews four critical approaches to criminal biographies,which,though generally following the same logic in historicizing and contextualizing their objects of research,vary in specific aspects and yield different evaluations of the cultural values and social functions of criminal biographies.