英国布克奖小说中的女性历史叙事:创作模式、动因与思想局限

British Women’s History Writing and the Booker Prize:Modes,Motivations and Limitations

2020年入选布克奖决选名单的女性作家远高于男性作家,被指掺有“政治正确”因素。而给予女作家更多获奖机会,是否意味着她们就此拥有更多的叙事权威呢?抑或她们只是在以更大规模投入男性把控的叙事之中?1969年布克奖开始颁布之时,正值二战后英国国力急剧衰退、英国小说发生重大变革之际,六七十年代女性小说受国际妇女运动的影响进入蓬勃发展期。综观布克奖获奖小说,其中女作家的叙事呈现出两种模式:一是有关不同文化对峙的叙事;二是有关传统文化回溯的叙事。我们深入探究她们的历史叙事模式,既可为上述问题的解答提供参考,也从一个侧面展现20世纪中叶至今英国女性叙事的创作特征、动因和思想局限。

When the Booker Prize was initiated in 1969, postwar Britain was undergoing a decline, accompanied by a great transformation in its novels. Works by women writers, inspired by the international women’s movement in the 1960s and 1970s,flourished. This survey of Booker-Prize winning novels shows that British women writers favor historical narratives and tend to adopt two dominant modes, namely, representing cultural clashes and tracing traditional culture. This exploration of historical narratives by Booker-Prize winners will shed some light on the creative features, motivations and limitations of these women writers from the last decades of the 20th century up to the present.