国外简·奥斯丁小说的认知文学研究评析

On the Cognitive Approaches to Jane Austen’s Novels in the West

国内外对奥斯丁小说的研究成果相当丰富,然而,近年来国外学界新出现的对其作品的认知文学研究却未引起国内学者足够关注。本文从具身体验、虚构心智、文学达尔文主义、神经认知诗学四个方面评析当今国外学者对奥斯丁作品的认知文学研究成果。分析可见,这些成果都殊途同归地表明:在进行人物塑造时,奥斯丁对人物的意识、身体、情感的洞察和描述具有社会文化性、具身性和生物性,甚至可以说,她在文本世界塑造的虚构人物的"感知"方式与当今认知科学研究发现的现实社会人类的认知方式高度一致。正是因为她的人物塑造符合人类的情感需求和审美体验,才使她的作品二百年来一直备受世界各国读者的喜爱。

Despite abundant scholarship on Jane Austen’s novels in China and in the West,few Chinese scholars pay enough attention to cognitive approaches to her noverls emerging in the West. This paper reviews the cognitive literary studies research on her novels from four aspects:embodied experience,fictional mind,literary Darwinism and neurocognitive poetics,revealing that Austen’s insights and description of characters’ consciousness,body and emotion in her characterization are sociocultural,embodied and biological. It can even be said that the way of“perception”of fictional characters in her textual world is highly consistent with the cognitive mechanism of real human beings proven by current cognitive science research. Moreover,her characterization conforms to the emotional need and the aesthetic experience of human beings,which is the very reason why the worldwide enthusiasm for her works lasts for over two hundred years.