拜伦与时代精神

Byron and the Spirit of the Age

本文选取哈兹利特、伍尔夫和当代拜伦研究者麦克甘所代表的三个时间节点,回顾了拜伦与不同时代精神的关系,考察拜伦如何反映或反抗时代精神,乃至超越时代调性。第一部分与哈兹利特的观点即“拜伦迎合时代精神”展开对话,论证拜伦并未屈从于“抽象化倾向”与所谓的“合法性”原则。第二部分借助伍尔夫关于拜伦与“普通读者”的讨论,阐述了超越理论话语的阅读实践更具诗意。第三部分以麦克甘的新作为契机,论证拜伦的诗学思想旨在打破体系、解放语言,其意义在当代尤为重要。本文主要围绕拜伦的《少侠哈洛尔德游记》第四卷的部分内容展开讨论。

This essay explores the interaction between Byron and the spirit of the age,how Byron reflects or resists the spirit of the age and eventually transcends the tone of the time. It develops its ideas through three important spots of time represented by William Hazlitt, Virginia Woolf and Jerome McGann respectively. Part I negotiates with Hazlitt's argument that Byron “panders to the spirit of the age” and maintains instead that Byron never succumbs to the abstraction tendency or the principle of legitimacy. Part II moves on to Woolf's discussion about Byron and the common reader in order to present a more poetic reading practice beyond theory. Part III is a dialogue with McGann and demonstrates the significance of Byron's poetics in our times to break away with systems and emancipate language. The essay mainly focuses on Canto IV of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.