肯尼亚白人移民身份嬗变背后的帝国兴衰——麦克戈耶《归乡》的双重叙事进程

The empire’s rise and fall behind the transmutation of white immigrants’status in Kenya:Dual narrative progression in Macgoye’s Homing in

“肯尼亚文学之母”玛乔丽·麦克戈耶是当代英裔肯尼亚白人作家。她因自己的非洲生活经历而关注20世纪在肯尼亚生活的英国白人移民。在小说《归乡》中,她在描绘杰克和艾伦一家的生活变迁时,表达了白人移民的身份建构、身份危机和身份解构主题,并隐含大英帝国在肯尼亚的兴衰。本文首先探讨麦克戈耶的白人移民书写和帝国逆写特质,然后探究白人移民身份嬗变的“显性情节发展”和大英帝国兴衰的“隐性进程”的互补关系,从而揭示小说的双重主题关怀和双重叙事进程,解析作家为肯尼亚的英国殖民体系瓦解谱写的一曲现实主义挽歌。

Marjorie O.Macgoye,“the Mother of Kenyan Literature”,is a contemporary British Kenyan white writer.Owing to her life experiences in Africa,she focused on British white immigrants’life in Kenya in the 20thcentury.InHoming in,when portraying the changes in the life of Jack and Allen’s family,she has expressed the theme of the white immigrants’identity construction,identity crisis and identity destruction and implies the rise and fall of the British Empire in Kenya.This essay traces Macgoye’s specialties of white immigrant writing and writingback imperial writing,then clarifies the“overt plot development”of the evolution of British white immigrants’identity in Kenya and the“covert progression”of the rise and fall of the British Empire.The purpose of this essay is to reveal the novel’s multiple thematic concerns and covert progression,and analyze the realistic elegy she has composed for the collapse of the British colonial system in Kenya.