风景政治的权力运作——评埃维列夫的《如画文学与美国风景变迁:1835—1874》

A Review of John Evelev’s Picturesque Literature and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1835-1874

美国学者约翰·埃维列夫的新作《如画文学与美国风景变迁:1835—1874》的核心议题是:在19世纪中期的美国如画文学中,风景政治的权力机制是如何运作的?全书打破了传统如画概念局限于美学领域的窠臼,以边疆、荒野、城市、郊区和村庄等景观和空间为意象,从自然风景、城市景观和郊区兴起等三个层面,探究了这一时期美国如画文学与国家意识形态、社会空间、阶级身份认同之间复杂的互动关系。由于全书聚焦美国东北部的如画风景,因此对地域性与国家民族性之间的逻辑关系尚需进一步论证。但整体而言,该书既有宽广的学术视野,也有细致的文本解读,对文学地理学、空间诗学和视觉艺术等跨学科研究具有重要参考价值。

John Evelev’s Picturesque Literature and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1835–1874 centers on the manipulations of power in the mid-nineteenth-century American picturesque literature from the perspective of the politics of landscape. Shedding light on frontier, wilderness, city, countryside and village, this book explores the connections between American picturesque literature, national ideology, social spaces and class identity in terms of natural scenery, urban landscape and the rise of the suburb. Focusing on the picturesque landscape in the northeastern United States, however, the book needs further elaboration on the relations between regionalism and nationalism. On the whole, the book’s contribution to literary geography, spatial poetics and visual arts is of great worth. It is an excellent work with its wide scope, close textual analysis and cross-disciplinary vision of literary studies.