第一叙述人与嵌套叙述人的微妙互动——简评《霸王铁金刚》中的叙事艺术

The Delicate Interaction of the First-person Narrator and the Embedded Narrator—A Brief Comment on the Narrative Art of The Man Who Would be King

《霸王铁金刚》是英国著名作家鲁德亚德·吉卜林的一篇短篇小说作品,讲述了一个平凡却异想天开想要成为国王的英国人在远东的冒险故事,最终"国王"攻克的王国被推翻,结局悲壮而惨烈。撇开吉卜林印度题材作品中一贯的帝国主义和殖民主义倾向,这篇小说的叙事艺术堪称经典。整篇小说的故事情节、人物塑造和主题展现都随着文中的两位叙述者的互动展开并升华。

The Man Who Would be King, written by British writer Rudyard Kipling, tells an adventurous story in India that two British outcasts established a kingdom in a remote area of Afghanistan and thus became king but finally were overturned and tor-mented to horrifying death. There are two narrators, the first-person and an embedded narrator who interactively push forward the plot and unfold the characterization and the theme.