走出灵与肉的困局——拜厄特小说中知识女性主题之时代变奏

Unraveling the Double Bind of Mind and Body:A Study of the Epochal Variations on the Female Intellectual Motif in A. S. Byatt’s Fiction

英国当代作家A·S·拜厄特在半个世纪以来的文学创作中,赋予西方经典哲学命题“灵与肉”以女性主义的新内涵,把心灵与肉体之间的关系问题重新语境化为20世纪50年代以来,英国知识女性所面对的精神世界追求与肉体需求之间的两难困境。从处女作《太阳的影子》到《吹口哨的女人》,拜厄特通过塑造不同时代、身份与个性女性的不同选择和命运走向,深度演绎了灵与肉的命题,从非此即彼的二元对立走向互相成就的平衡关系,其发展变化突出呈现了拜厄特小说中知识女性主题的时代变奏。

Contemporary British writer A. S. Byatt has endowed the Mind-Body problem, a classic western philosophical proposition, with a feminist twist in her literary works over the last five decades. Through recontextualizing the philosophical tension between mind and body in the lingering dilemma that British female intellectuals have been faced with, Byatt’s novels, spanning from her debutThe Shadow of the SuntoA Whistling Woman, reveal a series of variations on the motif of female intellectual from the 1950s to the early 21st century. Caught between the pursuits of the mind and the demands of the body, female intellectuals from different epochs, backgrounds and with different personality traits have demonstrated a shift from making an exclusive choice towards striking a dynamic balance.