新旧之辩——麦卡勒斯之历史意识与南方文学传统

自内战到南方文艺复兴时期,美国南方文学充斥着浓郁的向后看历史意识,弥漫着对田园牧歌式农业生活的怀旧气息,显露了或显性或隐性的种族主义思想。不同于前辈们对历史的沉迷所表现出的"纪念碑式"的历史意识,麦卡勒斯转而关注当下黑人的生存状况,审视南方奴隶制的罪恶,与历史进行对话,消解了传统南方作家对历史的宏大叙事,体现了其"批判式"历史意识以及作家的良知。就此而言,麦卡勒斯虽偏离了南方文学传统,但在新旧交迭中也形塑了新的南方文学传统。

From American Civil War to Southern Renaissance,American Southern literature were teeming with backward monumental historical consciousness,which presented itself as a nostalgic idyllic agrarian feeling and racism,either explicit or implicit.Different from the tradition of grand narrative about history,McCullers directs her attention to the present living condition of the Black and the Southern evil of slavery to converse with history,revealing her critical historical consciousness.Deviating from the old Southern literary tradition,McCullers's literary imagination,to some extent,has become a shaping force to the new one.