哥特小说的美国本土化——解读《最后的莫希干人》中的边疆叙事

Americanization of the gothic fiction: Reading the frontier narrative in The Last of the Mohicans

詹姆斯·库柏是公认的美国边疆神话的缔造者,然而他也被批评在艺术方面,尤其在文类选择上,保守地追随英国传统。然而,如果我们考察他在《最后的莫希干人》中对英国哥特小说的借用,就会发现库柏对哥特小说进行了创新性改造,将场景、主题和人物美国化,使具有鲜明英国特色的哥特小说成为了表达美国经验、反思美国国家民族历史的有效工具。

James Fenimore Cooper is generally considered a writer uniquely American in his creation of the frontier myth,but conservatively British in art as he loves to borrow from the British genres. This is in fact a misunderstanding,especially when we investigate into his adaptation of the British popular genre of gothic fiction in his The Last of the Mohicans. In the novel,instead of strictly following the British conventions,he has the gothic genre innovatively Americanized in the aspects of setting,themes and characterization. It is he who transforms the British-born genre into an effective tool in expressing American experiences and re-examining the American national history.