(不)可能的宽恕:温特森《时间之间》的叙事时间研究

(Im)possible Forgiveness:A Study of the Narrative Time in Jeanette Winterson's The Gap of Time

当代英国女作家珍妮特·温特森对莎士比亚的戏剧《冬天的故事》进行改写,创作了小说《时间之间》。她保留了原故事的基本情节和主要人物,却巧妙地对故事的叙事时间进行了重新安排,自如地进入人物的内心世界,着重呈现赛诺、列奥和谢普三位小说人物铸下致命大错之后长久的内心忏悔及寻求宽恕的心路历程。基于此,本文运用热奈特《叙事话语》中关于时间的论断以及德里达对“宽恕”的定义,从叙事故事和叙事话语两个层面的互动关系来探讨温特森是如何通过叙事时间的精心编排来传达作品中的“宽恕”主题的。

Jeanette Winterson,contemporary British woman writer,adapts Shakespeare's play The Winter's Tale into her novel The Gap of Time.She retains the original storyline and the main characters,but deftly reschedules the narrative time of the story,leads readers to enter freely into the inner world of the three characters,and exposes their haunting sense of inner repentance and consistent seeking for forgiveness after they have made fatal mistakes.Employing Genette's concept of time in Narrative Discourse and Derrida's definition of forgiveness,this article studies the interrelationship between the narrative story and discourse in The Gap of Time,trying to reveal how Winterson conveys the theme of“forgiveness”in her rewriting through deliberate arrangement of narrative time.