从乔叟到狄更斯的犹太人书写

Jewish writing from Chaucer to Dickens

基于14世纪至19世纪的英国作家乔叟、莎士比亚及狄更斯所塑造的犹太人物形象分析,发现犹太人的总体形象在英国文学中带有一脉相承的负面特征。这种负面刻板的模式化书写应源于基督教世界对犹太人长期的制度性歧视及社会集体无意识的传统偏见。然而,细读文本可以发现,这些模式化的书写同时带有细微复杂的差异性——乔叟通过基督徒“以恶治恶”及滥用惩罚的叙事对社会普遍的反犹情绪进行了客观性消解;莎士比亚借夏洛克之口对犹太人的弱势地位表示了矛盾的同情;狄更斯则赋予了恶棍费金一丝人性,借此表达对基督教济贫院的强烈反讽。这些差异化的书写体现了作家人文关怀的自觉选择和对现实批判的思想,同时也反映了英国及整个欧洲社会对待犹太人态度的逐步转变。

An analysis of the Jewish writing by Chaucer,Shakespeare and Dickens from the 14th to the 19th century shows an overall negative stereotyped image in British literature,which could be traced to the historical Christian world’s institutional racial discrimination against Jews and resulted from the deep-rooted collective social unconscious prejudice against the race.Nevertheless,a close reading of these writers’texts can find subtler sophisticated differences hidden in these images:Chaucer deconstructed the prevalent anti-Jewish sentiments through his narrative of the Christian world’s“tooth-for-tooth”revenge and abused punishment;Shakespeare showed his ambivalent sympathy for the Jews’inferior position through Sherlock’s defense;and Dickens expressed his strong irony of the Christian workhouse by the basic humanity he endowed with his villainous character Fagin.The narrative of these differences is the evidence of the writers’conscious humanistic care and critique of the reality;it also reflects the gradual changes of British and the whole European society on the Jewish issue.