（英语语言文学专业论文）漫长的道德追寻之旅——伦理批评视角下的《吉姆爷》.pdf

descriptive chinese abstract i 摘摘 要要 约瑟夫康拉德(1857-1924) 被西方评论家誉为 20 世纪最杰出的英国小说家之一。 在他所有作品中，吉姆爷被称为里程碑式的杰作。作者在这部作品中融入了深刻的 道德寓意，以独特的叙述手法，在并不复杂的情节中表现了对人性的矛盾、道德的冲突 等多重主题的探索。 小说的问世引起了广大评论家的关注。 许多评论家借助精神分析学、 社会学、现象学、叙事学和后殖民等理论对这部小说进行了深入细致的研究。这些研究 已构成我们阅读和理解吉姆爷时不可或缺的语境。 文学的伦理学批评也可以称作文学的道德批评， 它是指从伦理道德的角度研究文学 作品以及文学与作家、文学与读者、文学与社会关系等诸多方面的问题。文学伦理学批 评强调对文学作品的解读应当回归到对社会的人文和道德关怀。文学作为一种艺术形 式，集中描写了社会存在的道德矛盾和冲突，反映了人类社会的道德观念。吉姆爷 是一部极富道德寓意的现代主义作品。康拉德通过描述作品中主人公的道德追寻之旅， 全方位地展示了现代人的道德困境、道德危机和道德追寻。本文以文学伦理学批评理论 为切入点，以人物的道德寻找为主线，多角度地论证了道德追寻这一主题在作品中的表 现，深入探讨了作者对现代人的道德关怀。 “道德上的发现应该是每一个故事的目标”是康拉德的创作理念。在吉姆爷中， 他对人物道德上的发现进行了颇为理性的思考。 文章首先分析了小说的道德背景和康拉 德的伦理观，指出道德追寻是小说的主题。然后分析了小说中人物对道德探索和追寻的 动态过程，即作品中人物从道德两难到道德危机，再到道德寻找的过程。最后，文章从 康拉德的印象主义写作手法的道德内涵入手，指出吉姆爷是一部形式与内容完美结 合的作品。从康拉德描述的吉姆的命运中，读者不仅可以在道德上得到一些启示，同时 还可以体会到他对现代人的生存处境更为深切的关怀。 吉姆在责任与幻想之间走向了极 端，从而导致了他的死亡。而马洛的生活方式间接地提供了一种选择：最佳的生活状态 就是在责任与幻想中保持一种动态的平衡。 康拉德在吉姆爷中描绘了一次漫长的道德追寻之旅，他用自己独特的方式阐释 了当代社会的道德困境，并且以此来唤起现代人对道德与生活的思考。 关键词：康拉德；吉姆爷；伦理批评；道德两难；道德危机；道德追寻关键词：康拉德；吉姆爷；伦理批评；道德两难；道德危机；道德追寻 english abstract ii abstract joseph conrad (1857-1924) is acclaimed as one of the most outstanding british writers of the twentieth century. among all his works, lord jim has been regarded as a landmark and one of the worlds literary masterpieces. since its publication, the novel arouses the great interest of a lot of critics. many scholars interpret the great novel from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, sociology, phenomenology, and post-colonialism etc. the research in and abroad has become an indispensable context for the following study on lord jim. ethical critics claim that the interpretation of literary works should return to its moral and humanistic concerns to the society and human beings. it is the task of literature to explore the moral complexity in life and it is the task of criticism to find out the sense of morals in literature. ethical criticism offers a good perspective for conradian study in our country. lord jim is a work of extraordinary modernity with rich moral significance. by depicting the process of moral quest of the characters, conrad displays the moral quest dilemma, moral crisis and moral quest of modern people. this thesis explores the theme of moral quest in the light of ethical criticism and reveals conrads moral concerns to modern people. conrad holds the belief that moral discovery should be the object of every tale. this thesis firstly introduces the moral background and conrad ethical thoughts, and then analyzes the active process from moral crisis to moral quest of characters. at last, the thesis points out lord jim is a perfect combination of form and meaning by analyzing the moral theme embodied in conrads impressionistic writing. from jims fate and the main narrator, marlows quest, the reader can not only achieve some moral enlightenment, but also feel conrads deep moral concerns to the moral situations of modern people. between the two important elements duty and imagination, jim walks up to an extreme, and this causes his death. but marlows life offers a choice to the reader that the best life is somewhere in an active middle ground between these two elements. in short, conrad depicts a long journey of moral quest in the novel. he exposes the moral situations in a unique way, which arouses peoples contemplation upon the morality and life in modern society. key words: conrad; lord jim; ethical criticism; moral dilemma; moral crisis; moral quest 湘潭大学湘潭大学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所 取得的研究成果。除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外，本论文不包含任 何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。对本文的研究做出重要贡 献的个人和集体，均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的 法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意 学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文 被查阅和借阅。本人授权湘潭大学可以将本学位论文的全部或部分内容编 入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇 编本学位论文。 涉密论文按学校规定处理。 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 introduction 1 introduction joseph conrad (1857-1924), born in poland, was one of the greatest novelists and stylists of modern english literature. at the age of 17 conrad traveled to marseilles, where he served in french merchant vessels before joining a british ship in 1878. in 1886 he obtained british nationality and masters certificate in the british merchant service. though conrad began learning english late at the age of twenty-one, he had become one of “the very greatest novelists in the language - or any language” (leavis 257). besides, he was taken along with george eliot and henry james in leavis highly selective great tradition of english novelists, which reinforced his world reputation. conrad is particularly important for understanding the twentieth-century british literature and culture. his life was full of painful conflicts and dramatic changes; and he was anguished by the conflicts between his pessimism and idealism, between his hatred tyranny and fear of revolutionary violence, between his polish patriotism and abandonment of poland. he experienced changes from a polish to english, from a sea-farer to a professional writer. what remained unchanged all his life, however, was his persistent fidelity to moral and aesthetic ideals. conrad was true to his own moral sentiment, so he brought a new psychological and moral intensity to the english novel and its traditions of manners and morals (richetti 685). 0.1 literature review on lord jim conrad is a productive novelist; he never stops writing until his death in 1924. lord jim, which is regarded as one of his greatest novels, was published in october 1900. since its publication, the novel has been acclaimed by many critics. richard curle claims in 1914 that “there can be little doubt that conrads fame as a novelist rests chiefly upon lord jim” (35-36). cedric watts expresses the same attitude: “lord jim holds a secure place as one of conrads greatest novels and, therefore, as one of the worlds literary masterpieces” (111). since lord jim has been among the most widely read of conrads novels, consequently, criticism on this novel has been conducted from a variety of angles. in various perspectives and in the light of different theories, many reviewers comment on the novels nature, the profundity of the themes, the faraway feelings it evokes, the intense style, its exotic setting and original narrative methods, etc. many scholars focus on the psychoanalytic biographic analysis of the novel. gustav morf is among the first critics to introduction 2 apply the psychoanalytic approach to the study of lord jim. in the polish heritage of joseph conrad (1930), he claims that lord jim is a “psychoanalytical novel written before psychoanalysis was founded” (165-66). morf takes the conrad/jim identification as far as is conceivable. jim is a study of conrads own guilt at leaving poland. everything about jim is either a mark of identification with, or a form of compensation for, something in conrad. bernard meyer goes even farther in his psychoanalytical interpretation of conrad/jim relation. in his joseph conrad: a psychoanalytic biography (1967), he claims that jims sense of guilt at jumping from the patna is the expression of conrads own guilt at leaving poland that the desertion of a shipful of pilgrims represents the abandonment of his people; that jims surrendering his life to doramin is the result of conrads believing that he is responsible for the death of his mother, thus the novel-writing is in fact a compensatory act. unlike the critics who take a psychoanalytic approach to lord jim, david thornburn labels conrad as an adventure story writer like robert stevenson, and he sees the pattern of the traditional adventure bildungsroman characteristics of stevenson reappear in lord jim, only a more complex form: in the former, it is “a mature but humble figure helping a younger man towards maturity, but in the latter, it is an older man who discovers in a younger one the standard of himself” (78-81). concerning to the theme of lord jim, many critics show different opinions. some critics probe into the theme of friendship. for instance, ian watt sees the jim/marlow relationship as the core of the novels achievement and a major reason for its huge reputation (338). guerard sees that the novels central relationship is that of marlow and jim. he points out that jim needs marlow in that he needs “a judge, witness and advocate in the solitude of his battle with himself”, while marlows interest in jim is out of curiosity, and of a moral need to “explore and test a standard of conduct”. so he also thinks that this is a novel “of moving and enduring friendship between an older and a younger man” (qtd. in moser 398). there are also some critics who, focusing on the relationships between characters, hold that lord jim is about “marlows heroic but in the end, vain attempt to apprehend and express jims inner identity and his moral crisis” (bachelor 20). to joseph beach, “marlows varying observations of jim are like convergent rays of light,” focusing rigorously upon the “one point which he wishes to make visible to our imagination” (beach 197). richard curle, however, thinks that the great achievement of lord jim is its moral clarity: it “raises a fierce moral issue in a very definite form and carries it through in a high level of creative intensity” (35-36). he thinks the novel raises moral questions such as bravery and cowardice. daniel r. schwarz points out that jims action has violated “the fixed moral introduction 3 standards of the merchant marine - the code, stipulating honor, fidelity, courage, a highly developed sense of responsibility”(222). it is this moral dereliction that weighs heavily on jims conscience throughout his life. guerard regards lord jim as “an intricate novel about possible emotional and moral response to a relatively simple man, even to a type of man” (qtd. in moser 396). besides the review mentioned above abroad, lord jim is more and more popular in chinese literati. in 1934， liang yuchun firstly translated this great literary works into chinese. until now, there are seven chinese versions. since 1990s, the research on lord jim has grown up into an upsurge. among the seventy-one papers on conrad from the year of 1991 to 2003, there are fifteen papers on lord jim(王晓兰,王松林 45). critics interpret the novel from the perspectives of narration, morality, bakhtinian carnivalesque, existentialism, post-colonialism, racialism and psychology. besides these papers in journals, many dissertations of m.a. and phd have expounded this novel. in a word, the study on conrad and lord jim is becoming intensive and mature. 0.2 the feasibility and significance of the research there is no doubt that lord jim is a modern literary work with rich moral significance. from all these achievements mentioned above, there is no denying the fact that some attempts have been made to analyze the moral meaning of lord jim. however, there has as yet been no detailed study of conrads lord jim in terms of ethical criticism, so the object of this study is to expound the moral theme of this novel in the light of ethical criticism. based on the predecessors studies, this thesis intends to explore an active process from moral crisis to moral quest by analyzing the plots, characters, and techniques in the novel. conrad once expresses that the moral discovery should be the aim of every story in his under western eye. moral intensity to the modern society is the core of this novel; the thesis will prove that the characters in lord jim are in a process of moral quest in different ways, and point out the moral quest theme has profound practical meaning to modern people. 0.3 methodology and arrangement of content the thesis will be finished through close reading the novel and analysis of characters, plots and techniques in the light of ethical criticism. it is with the objective in mind that we have to focus on the theory of criticism first. according to what is ethics written by mr. he huaihong, the word “ethics” appears in a lot of ancient chinese works. he interprets it as “the way of being a human”; it is a subject introduction 4 of the relationship of people (何怀宏 8). american heritage dictionary (ahd) explains the word as following “ethics: the study of the general nature of morals and of specific moral choices to be made by a person; moral philosophy.” or “the rules or standards governing the conduct of a person or the members of a profession.” ethical criticism is, in fact, a traditional approach. in the western theories, ethics could be found almost everywhere. from plato to aristotle, coleridge, freud and lacan, they all pay attention to discovering the ethical connotation of literary works. in his famous book the great tradition, dr. leavis declared jane austen, george eliot, henry james and joseph conrad as the great english novelists because these artists considered the fiction as a serious form and claimed it for moral reflection and human sympathy, they shared a deep conviction that literature reveals humanity and that this is ethically good. the practice of ethical criticism on literary works has existed for a long time (邹建军 28-29). however, with the passing of time and as the discourse of criticism changes, the ethical grounding has become insecure (eaglestone xii). the twentieth century is an age when literary theories are prevailing. yet literary theory since the 1940s has usually been hostile to ethical evaluation. the theory of ethical literary criticism examines a literary work in order to reveal its system of morality. a very simple, common description of what ethical criticism is would be the following - it makes ethical judgments about literary works. this kind of description can and often does make an impression that ethical criticism equals censorship. what contemporary ethical literary critics would say about this is fairly obvious - only the misuse of ethical criticism can lead to censorship. ethical literary critics are convinced that the job of literature is to teach moral lessons, which is why they reductively transform every text into a moral fable. they are nothing more than narrow-minded doctrinaire moralists who take no notice of the freedom of speech. ethical literary critics are also accused of being intellectual guerrillas, fighters, of being both anti-philosophical and anti-theoretical, that is why they do not understand anything about aesthetic imperatives. oscar wilde famously remarks that there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book and books are well written or badly written. he was echoed by formalist critics such as cleanth brooks, a doyen of the new critics, who insisted that edification was the function of religion but not of poetry. george orwell, though himself a didactic novelist, was of this view as well, and it is one that most critics adopt when the issue is censorship. despite the powerful challenge to ethical criticism by some critics or literary theories, there has been recently “a marked turn toward the ethical” (qtd. in parker 32). in 1980s, a profusion of work has been done especially in united states that looks very much like the introduction 5 beginnings of a significant resurgence in ethical criticism. that includes the important works of martha nussbaum, cora diamond, wayne c. booth, tobin siebers, charles altieri, many of whom took part in important symposia on ethics and literature published in the journals ethics and new literary history in 1983 and 1988. the resurgence also includes richard rorty, stanley cavell, and alasdair macintyre, who have published important books and papers on ethics and literature in the recent past. according to rorty, literature becomes for ethics what mathematics is for physics, a sort of necessary handmaiden. martha nussbaum goes further than rorty in treating literature not merely as a sort of servant of ethics, but as itself moral philosophy. david parker points out in his book ethics, theory and the novel that ethical literary criticism indicates a new road which literary studies in the end must take (4). wayne c. booth (the company we keep: an ethics of fiction, 1998) observed that most people, including most sophisticated literary critics, evaluate literature ethically, asking whether particular stories are good for us to read and how we should react to them. noel carroll claimed a similar opinion in his article “art and ethical criticism: an overview of recent directions for research,” of course, despite the effective moratorium on ethical criticism in philosophical theories of art, the ethical evaluation of art flourished. . indeed, with regard to topics like racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on, it may even be the case today that the ethical discussion of art is the dominant approach on offer by most humanistic critics, both academics and literati alike. (110) at the beginning of the new twenty-first century, china witnesses a knowledgeable professor, nie zhenzhao who loudly and clearly argues that literary criticism has lost its orientation in modern time and that it has been exhausted in finding or explaining literary theories which he calls “theoretical complex”. he appeals to critics to delve into the texts and finding the ethical truth in literature (聂珍钊 17). it is the task of literature to explore the moral complexity in life and it is the task of criticism to find out the sense of morals in literature. and the author of this thesis will try to make a tentative ethical analysis of one of her favorite novels, joseph conrads lord jim in order to get a deep understanding of the novel and the author. the thesis consists of three chapters. the first chapter deals with the moral background of the novel and gi