“小说家的赎罪之道”——《赎罪》中的隐性叙事进程探析

“The Novelist’s Way of Atonement”—An Interpretation of the Covert Narrative Progression in Atonement

《赎罪》是伊恩•麦克尤恩的经典代表作,已有研究多聚焦于小说中女主人公布里奥妮的成长、救赎和创伤经历等表层情节因素,忽略了隐匿在小说情节背后的多股隐性叙事暗流。依托申丹教授的隐性进程理论,本文认为小说中蕴含着多个相互嵌套又并行的叙事进程,暗含了两位隐含作者,分别是贯穿于主叙述层的隐含作者布里奥妮,以及贯穿于全文的第三人称叙述者麦克尤恩。在小说的元结尾叙述层,第一位隐含作者布里奥妮的自我指涉打破了第一条隐性进程,揭示了前文文本的虚构性和不可靠性,同时第二条隐性进程在隐含作者麦克尤恩的叙事中悄然发展,针对布里奥妮的不可靠叙述做出隐含否定性评论,继而转向小说家的伦理之维,邀请读者对“虚构”与“真实”的关系进行思考并寻求“虚构”的出路。

Atonement is a classic masterpiece of Ian McEwan. Most studies have focused on the plot development of the novel, such as the growth, redemption and traumatic experiences of the heroine Briony, ignoring the multiple covert narrative undercurrents behind the plot of the novel. Based on the covert progression theory of Professor Shen Dan, this paper argues that the novel contains multiple nested and parallel narrative movements, with two implied authors in the novel’s main narrative layer: Briony, who runs through the main narrative layer, and McEwan, a third-person narrator who runs through the entire novel. At the meta-ending narrative level of the novel, the first implied author Briony makes a self-reference, breaking the first covert process and revealing the fictionality and unreliability of the preceding text. While the second implicit process develops quietly in the narrative of the implied author McEwan, making an implicit negative comment against Briony’s unreliable narrative, and then turning to the novelist’s ethical dimension, inviting the reader to comment on the relationship between “fiction” and “truth” and to seek a way out of “fiction”.