《公众的怒火》:后现代神话与元小说

The Public Burning: A Postmodern Myth and A Metafiction

美国后现代主义小说家罗伯特·库弗在他的小说《公众的怒火》中,将事实与虚构有机地交织在一起,将历史神话化,编造了一个当代神话,以虚构的文本揭示了历史的真实;运用后现代主义元小说戏仿小说这一形式和叙事本身,把历史事件转变为被称之为小说的语言体系,在构筑小说幻象的同时又揭露这种幻象,使读者意识到它远不是现实生活的摹本,而只是作家编撰的故事,从而导致了传统小说及其叙事在形式上和语言上的解体。这两种艺术形式揭示:像虚构的小说文本一样,历史与现实也是虚构的,也是人工制成品。

In his novel The Public Burning, Robert Coover, American postmodernist novelist, organically interweaves facts and inventions together and mythicizes history, thus having made up a contemporary myth which reveals the truth of history with its invented text; parodies the form of novel and narrative itself by using metafiction, transforming the historical events into a language system called a novel, exposing the mirages of the novel at the same time as constructing them, which makes the reader realize that the novel is not at all a copy of real life but only a story invented by the writer, consequently having caused disintegration of traditional novel and its narrative in form and language. These two artistic forms reveal that, like the novel text, history and reality are also fabricated, also man-made products.