从崇高到荒诞:《维克多·弗兰肯斯坦的卷宗》对《弗兰肯斯坦》的后现代改写

From sublimity to absurdity: The postmodern rewriting of Frankenstein in The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein

后现代文学将改写合法化,经典作品的改写成为作家创作的一种常用方式,改写的文本反映了不同时代的人文内涵。本文比较18世纪现代文学经典《弗兰肯斯坦》与英国后现代作家彼特·阿克罗伊德的改写文本《维克多·弗兰肯斯坦的卷宗》,通过对照分析两个文本的叙事结构、对象、意图等,发现作品主题从崇高到荒诞的改写策略,并指出现代性强调理性与秩序的崇高,在后现代已经演变为表现非理性与无序的荒诞,这也是后现代写作拒绝科学主义与逻各斯中心主义的方式。

Postmodernism legitimized rewriting, and the rewriting of literary classics has been a frequent strategy adopted to represent the change of humanistic connotations over different historical periods. The present article compares Frankenstein of the eighteenth century with English postmodern writer Peter Ackroyd’s The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein and, by analyzing the narrative structures, objects and intentions in the two texts. It is found that there is a change in leitmotif from reason, order and sublimity of the modern to unreason, disorder and absurdity of the postmodern.