挥之不去的种族话题:论《新来的男生》重写《奥赛罗》的策略

Still Harping on Racial Issues:on New Boy Rewriting Othello

本文从经典重写的角度出发,分析谢瓦利埃《新来的男生》对莎士比亚著名悲剧《奥赛罗》的重写策略。谢瓦利埃将奥赛罗的悲剧从成人世界移置于当代美国青少年中,并在小说中亦步亦趋地“复制”了莎剧中的人物、事件和关键物件,从特定的角度体现了小说作者对依然肆虐美国社会的种族歧视的关切,希望引起人们对“无意的种族歧视”的关注,并警醒人们,消除种族歧视需要从少年儿童开始。谢瓦利埃的经典重写将关注点完全限制在种族问题上,从而稀释了莎士比亚《奥赛罗》更深刻的人性悲剧意义。事实上,这样的局限也同样体现在相当一部分当代西方的莎评文献中,这恰好需要引起中国莎评学者注意,以防盲目跟风。

This paper examines Chevalier's New Boy,an attempt at rewriting Shakespeare's canonical tragedy of Othello.After a detailed analysis of the work,the author points out that by transplanting most of Shakespeare's characters,events and even key objects in Othello into a contemporary American teenager school,Chevalier demonstrates her concern over the still rampaging issue of racial discrimination in the present-day America,and makes her point that the effort to eliminate racial discrimination should start among the teenagers.However,by focusing almost entirely on the racial issues in Othello,we are running a risk of narrowing the tragic significance of Othello,which is also very clearly the trend of Othello criticism in the West for the past decades,against which we should be critically alert.