美国南方文学中的旅行载体及其现代性隐喻

Vehicles and Their Metaphors of Modernity in the Southern Literature

南方是美国地理和文化中一个独特的区域,总是与落后的种植业、内战的惨败、贵族的没落等意识联系在一起。面对以火车和汽车为代表的工业现代性的渗透,以威廉·福克纳、托马斯·沃尔夫和弗兰纳里·奥康纳为代表的南方作家表现出了不同的应对态度,这种态度典型地体现在他们作品中的人物对旅行载体的选择上。留恋南方庄园生活的福克纳,总是试图用马匹和马车去抗拒以汽车为代表的现代性;自幼随母亲走南闯北做生意的沃尔夫,喜欢火车的速度以及由此带来的与南方传统的现代性疏离;被残缺的身体所束缚而且笃信天主教的奥康纳,对汽车怀着赞同与否定的暧昧心情,汽车在她的笔下既是运动的便捷载体,又可能成为宗教信仰失却下的暴力犯罪工具。

As a unique area in American geography and culture, the South is always related to backward plantation, defeat in the Civil War and degradation of the aristocracy. Facing the aggression of the industrial modernity represented by trains and automobiles, the southern writers represented by William Faulkner,Thomas Wolf and Flannery O’Connor bespeak different attitudes, which are typically represented in the travel vehicles chosen by the characters in their fiction. Faulkner, who harbors nostalgia toward the southern plantation, always depicts the resistance of horses and horse wagons against automobiles. Wolf, who used to travel nationwide with his mother doing business, prefers the speed and comfort of trains. O’Connor, who is heavily encumbered by her deformed legs, harbors ambiguous attitudes toward automobiles. In her fiction, automobiles not only represent the convenience of industrial modernity, but also degenerate into tools of violent crimes when their drivers do not have religious faith.