战争、文学与加拿大国家形象建构——以《将军们寿终正寝》为例

War,Literature,and the Construction of Canada’s National Image:Taking Generals Die in Bed as an Example

加拿大作家查尔斯·耶鲁·哈里森的《将军们寿终正寝》是一部反战小说,它采取与经典作品《西线无战事》类似的现实主义视角展现了一战的血腥与残酷,但同时又使用非线性叙事等现代主义手法来颠覆之前的战争书写模式,为此后的加拿大战争文学创作提供了重要参考借鉴。作为加拿大早期反战文学的重要作品,这部小说却在发行后逐渐湮没无闻,其根本原因在于它表达了对战争中的理想主义和英雄主义的质疑,而这种怀疑主义精神直接冲击了彼时加拿大所建构的独立自主的国家形象。本文从小说语言、叙事等方面开展内部研究,再从加拿大社会、政治、历史等方面开展外部研究,进而展现作品的价值和意义,揭示战争、文学与国家形象建构之间的深层关系。

Similar to All Quiet on the Western Front,Canadian writer Charles Yale Harrison’s anti-war novel Generals Die in Bed vividly depicts the sanguinary and merciless scenes in the First World War.Meanwhile,the novel adopts such modern techniques as non-linear narration to subvert previous war writing,providing significant reference for later Canadian war novels.The major reason why Generals Die in Bed,a representative novel in early Canadian anti-war literature,fell into oblivion is that the novel expressed skepticism about the idealism and heroism advocated in and after the war,which directly contradicted the myth of Canada’s construction of a modern nation-state at that time.An intrinsic approach in terms of the novel’s language and narrative features in this paper,coupled with an extrinsic approach in light of Canada’s social,political and historical conditions of that era,will not only reveal the literary value of this anti-war novel but also disclose the close interaction between war,literature,and the construction of Canada’s national image.