《马戏团之夜》:一场现代性的空间体验

Nights at the Circus:A Space Experience of Modernity

在《马戏团之夜》中,安吉拉•卡特有意识地把她的小说设置在封闭的空间内,以映射现代人逼仄的表现空间。通过具有代表性的意象、事件及其空间关系,把人的残忍和一本正经糅合在一起,把梦幻、荒诞和现实融为一体,创造出一个虚虚实实、可笑又可悲的世界。书中充满了讥讽和嘲弄,揭露了人性的丑陋、残暴、无奈与迷失,从而对西方社会在现代化进程中的精神文化和物质文化进行了鞭辟入里的批判。文章从空间体验的表征、权力空间的解构和空间叙事的并置关系三个方面展开论述,旨在阐释《马戏团之夜》带来的省思。

Angela Carter set the story deliberately in a closed space in Nights at the Circus to offer a reflection of the cramped space of modern people. Through the unique images, incidents and their spatial relationship, Carter put human’s mercilessness and earnestness together, mixed fantasies, absurdities and realities into one, and thus invented a world of being real and unreal, ridiculous and pathetic as well. Such a world was full of irony and mockery. Accordingly, she exposed the ugliness, the ruthlessness, the helplessness, and the disorientation of human nature, and made a poignant criticism of both spiritualism and materialism of the western world in the course of modernization. This essay aims to explain what Nights at Circus can enlighten us from the following three aspects: the representation of spatial experience, the deconstruction of power space and the juxtaposition of space narrative.