儿童文学死亡书写的可能、限度及启示

Death Writing in Children’s Literature:Possibility,Limit and Its Enlightenment

在现代儿童文学中,得益于儿童观的现代革新及对儿童文学分层的理性认知,“死亡”已不再是话语禁忌而成为被接纳的议题。在对死亡“写什么”与“怎么写”的表述中,受制于儿童文学文类的杂糅而衍生出对死亡阐释的可能性及阈限。在历史化动态发展的语境中,儿童文学的死亡书写并不止于生命之殇的疼痛体验,而是同青少年的成长议题有机融合,从而扩充了死亡书写的长度、宽度与深度,这对于儿童文学自我封闭的本质主义起到了理论纠偏作用。同时,以死亡书写延展的生命重量对因幻想而衍生的文化轻逸产生了抵制效应。当然,死亡书写进入儿童文学文本也应是有限度的,如何针对儿童文学分层结构采用对应的叙事策略是问题的关键所在。

“Death” in modern children’s literature has been widely accepted rather than been rejected as a discourse taboo thanks to the modern innovation of views on children and the rational cognition of the stratification of children’s literature. In the expressions of “what to write” and “how to write” about death,the possibility and the threshold to interpret death are derived from the hybridity of children ’s literature. In the context of historically dynamic development,the writing of death in children’s literature not only brings about the experience of pain over the death of life,but also integrates with the issues of children’s development,thus expanding the length,width and depth of the writing about death. Death writing,in this sense,performs a vital function in rectifying the self-closed theory of essentialism in children’s literature. At the same time,the weight of life extended by death writing has a resistance effect on the cultural lightness derived from fantasy. Of course,children’s literature should set a limit to the volume of texts on death writing in children’s literature,and the key issue lies in proper adaptation of respective narrative strategies based on the stratified structure of children’s literature.