民谣、自然与国家——论济慈对彭斯的鉴越与不列颠国家身份构建

济慈受浪漫主义先驱罗伯特·彭斯影响颇深,这源于二者相似的境遇与情感以及共同浸润的英诗传统。济慈对彭斯的民谣体进行借鉴,具体从民谣体裁与题材、方言与经典意象着手,从而实现以诗歌书写构建英苏一体的不列颠国家身份认同。济慈内心始终存有布鲁姆所谓的“影响的焦虑”。诗人以想象式书写“崇高自然”,弥补彭斯“史诗自然”的缺席,实现克服焦虑、超越前驱。最终济慈逾越彭斯笔下的苏格兰一隅一景,放眼人类整体命运,彰显出诗人的“人道主义”情怀,进而推动不列颠国家普世形象在欧洲大陆的塑造。

Keats is deeply influenced by the romantic precursor Robert Burns and such influence originates from the similar circumstances they had been confronted with,the emotions they possessed,and essentially,the shared British poetic tradition that penetrates them.Keats takes shape in Burns’s folk ballad,specifically in form and contents,dialect and unique images,thus realizing the identification of Britain in unity of England and Scotland through poetic writing.However,the“anxiety of influence”proposed by Harold Bloom did always haunt Keats’s mind,and the poet eventually overcame and transcended it through finalizing the imaginative“sublime nature”of his own to complement the absence of“epic nature”of Burns.Instead of being confined to Scotland as a particular place and space depicted by Burns,Keats illustrated his spirit of humanitarianism through his concern for human beings as a whole and thus propelling the establishment of universal image of Britain over the European continent.