爱伦·坡《黑猫》中的不可靠叙述与道德寓意

The Unreliable Narration and the Moral Implication in Allan Poe’s“The Black Cat”

爱伦·坡是美国著名的诗人、短篇小说家,受到国内外批评界广泛关注。就其短篇小说而言,学界尤其关注他的恐怖短篇小说,聚焦人物的变态心理和行动、故事的离奇怪诞、谋杀的恐怖效果,分析叙事中的残暴恐怖事件给读者带来的惊悚和震愕,但对其小说蕴含的道德寓意关注不多。通过细读短篇小说《黑猫》,可以发现坡塑造了一位为逃脱法律责任而隐瞒杀妻真相的不可靠叙述者。本文运用不可靠叙述理论,分析叙述者在“三大轴”上的不可靠叙述,特别是叙述者的拉近型不可靠叙述所具有的迷惑性和欺骗性,揭示作为叙述者的人物“我”的性格的暴戾乖张、伪善自私,以及作品蕴含的道德寓意,从而激发读者对人性善恶的思考。

Edgar Allan Poe is a famous American poet and short story writer.He has received wide-ranging critical concern worldwide.As for his short stories,scholars attached special attention to his horrible stories with elaborations focused on characters’abnormal mentality and action,the bizarre and grotesque aspects of stories and the horrible effects of murders,and the thrilling and shocking effects on readers brought about by the narration of brutality and horror,but they ignored the moral implications in some short stories.A close reading of“The Black Cat”reveals that Poe portrays an unreliable narrator who conceals the truth about killing his wife in order to escape legal liability.This paper applies unreliable narration theory to analyzing the narrator’s unreliable narration on“three axes”,the bonding unreliability from the whole structure of the work in particular,so as to unveil the violent and perverse,and hypocritical and selfish temperament of the male character as well as the moral implications embedded in the story to stimulate readers’thoughts about the human nature.