（英语语言文学专业论文）福克纳《喧哗与骚动》中后现代主义成分分析.pdf

iv 摘要摘要 威廉福克纳是美国文学史上一位非常重要的作家。 喧哗与骚动被公认 为他最好也是最难读的作品，它集中描写了没落的康普生家族最后一代人的故 事。这部小说一直是评论家关注的焦点，然而他们的注意力大多数集中在小说 的现代性方面，而对小说中隐含的后现代主义手法较少关注。本文通过对喧 哗与骚动中的后现代主义成分进行研究，揭示了福克纳的后现代主义思想与 写作技巧，表明福克纳不仅是一位现代主义作家，同时也是一位后现代主义作 家。 本文简要分析了现代主义与后现代主义的区别，指出后现代主义三个突出 的特征: (1)许多后现代主义者，尤其是元小说主义者表达了对语言本身和口头 叙述的过程的关切,其存在着与传统叙事层面相对立并揭示其虚构性的“元层 面” ；(2)不确定性广泛存在于后现代主义的作品中，是因为后现代主义者对语 言、有机世界、认知世界感到怀疑;(3)由不确定性导致的对文本本身真实性的怀 疑,促使读者与作者一道参与到文本意义的创造过程中来，从而使文本阐释呈现 出无限种可能性。 南方和福克纳自己的文化背景与其从不间断的实践使他自然而然地接受了 后现代主义的思想和技巧，在他的名著喧哗与骚动中可以找到佐证。在这 部小说当中福克纳通过以下的方式来阐述他的后现代主义思想: (1)无限可能性 参与进叙事层面，进而构成“元小说”;(2)这部作品当中存在许多的不确定性: 杂乱无章的情节，开放式的结尾，碎片的叙述等等;(3)由于作品中存在的不确定 性，导致读者不再是被动的接受作品的观点，而可以自由的穿梭与作品中，得 出自己的观点。 小说中存在的这些后现代主义的思想和技巧都显示了福克纳在小说创作方 面的先锋精神。从这个意义上讲，福克纳是后现代主义的创始人之一并推动了 后现代主义的发展，不愧为美国文学史的巨匠。 v 关键词关键词: 福克纳；后现代主义； 喧哗与骚动 ；元小说；不确定 ii abstract william faulkner is a most important writer in american literary history. the sound and the fury is considered to be one of his most successful and most difficult works. many critics tend to analyse the work from modernist perspective. this thesis, however, points out that with postmodernist techniques displayed in the sound and the fury, faulkner could also be viewed as a postmodernist writer. this thesis makes a rough comparison between modernism and postmodernism. the comparison is made on the basis of three aspects: (1) many postmodernists, especially metafictionists, stress their concern with language and story-telling process, the reality or the world acquires a problematic status in their writings. instead of trying to represent or reflect the reality, they seek to reveal fiction as fiction; (2) the principle of indeterminacy is salient in postmodernist writings. this is because postmodernists are skeptical about the transparency of language, the organic universe, and the knowability of the world; and (3) many postmodernists doubt the truthfulness of the text caused by indeterminacy, and urges the reader to participate, together with the author, in the process of creating the textual meaning, which, therefore, manifests numerous possibilities in paraphrasing the text. the southern and faulkners own backgrounds together with his unceasing experiments make it natural for him to accept the above postmodernist ideas and techniques and practice them in his works. this especially can be traced in his masterpiece the sound and the fury. in this novel, faulkner manifests the postmodernist ideas and techniques through the following methods: (1) numerous possibilities have joined the narration plane to constitute the meta-fiction; (2) there is no determinacy in this writing. we can see bifurcating plots, open endings, figure-like characters, fragmented narration, etc., that all point to indeterminacy; (3) due to the indeterminacy of the novel, readers no longer passively accept what the author tells about the story. they can have their personal understanding of the novel as well as dynamic searching for its implied meanings. iii the sound and the fury can be found to own earlier postmodernist thoughts and techniques under intensive reading. this novel reflects faulkners ahead-of-time consciousness. in this sense, faulkner could be glorified as one of the founders of postmodernism who pushed forward the rise of postmodernism. it is beyond question that faulkner is esteemed to be the master of american literature. key words: faulkner, postmodernism, the sound and the fury, meta-fiction, indeterminacy 上海交通大学 学位论文原创性声明 上海交通大学 学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下， 独立进行研究工作所取得的成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外， 本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。 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结果由本人承担。 学位论文作者签名：耿培英 日期：2009 年 2 月 2 日 上海交通大学 学位论文版权使用授权书 上海交通大学 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。本人授权上海交通大学可以将本学 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。 保密保密，在 年解密后适用本授权书。 本学位论文属于 不保密 不保密。 （请在以上方框内打“” ） 学位论文作者签名：耿培英 指导教师签名：沈炎 日期：2009 年 2 月 2 日 日期：2009 年 2 月 2 日 i acknowledgements this thesis would have been impossible without the help of those kind persons hereafter mentioned with gratitude, although the responsibility for its shortcomings rests with me alone. for encouragement, support, and frank criticism at various stages of the development of the thesis, my special thanks go to my supervisor, professor shen yan, who afforded me pithy and scholarly advice and whose invaluable suggestions and strict instructions have helped greatly to shape this thesis. thanks are also due to professor hu quansheng, professor zuo xiaolan, professor he weiwen, professor hu kaibao, professor wei xiaofei, and professor tong jianping, who have greatly benefited my intellectual growth through their inspiring lectures, and all my teachers in the school of foreign language, shanghai jiaotong university, to them i owe much of my knowledge in the english language, linguistics, literature, and especially in literature studies. i want to extend my heartfelt thanks to my dear friend who show me great love and care. it is their support and encouragements that make me have the confidence to overcome any difficulty i have met before. m.a. thesis shanghai jiao tong university dec, 2008 1 chapter i introduction the sound and the fury was faulkners own favorite among his novels. modern criticism has concerned with this preference. yet at the time of the novels publication in 1929 its critical reception was discouraging. the most frequently voiced objection was the baffling obscurity of faulkners narrative technique. the author had, after all, a simple enough story to tell. why, then should he break a straight forward family chronicle into a series of mysterious interior monologues that proceed in defiance of the usual conventions of plot, chronology, and even, sometimes, syntax? the answers, this thesis argues, lies in faulkners postmodernist techniques. 1.1 the life and works of william faulkner william faulkner (1897-1962) was born in the southern state of america, at new albany, mississippi, and the majority of his novels are set in this region, especially in the area around oxford, mississippi where he spent most of his childhood and a large part of his later life. because his novels are tied to a specific region, faulkner is what known as a regional novelist. in his books, he recreates the history, the geography and the atmosphere of the place which he knew so well. such a factual basis does not mean, however, that faulkners books are sociological tracts, for faulkner was not a sociologist but an artist and he transforms the actuality of what he writes by applying to it the power of his imagination and a variety of fictional techniques. what emerges from his books is not an accurate picture of the south but an impression of the area which penetrates deep into the psychology of its people, both individually and collectively, which evokes in a telling way what it feels like to live in and belong to the south at many different moments of its history and at many different levels in its social structure. through these profound insights into the feelings of individuals, faulkner both reinforced the regional flavor of his books and, paradoxically, gave them a significance which translated the regional limitations. the reinforcement is caused by m.a. thesis shanghai jiao tong university dec, 2008 2 the fact that the feelings are often part of a vast network of influences stemming from the physical nature of the place, from its history and from its social organization. the universal significance is present because even readers who do not belong to the southern states of america can appreciate and understand the feelings which faulkner reveals. these feelings may be specifically southern in their inspiration but they are also universal in that they are human feelings. so william faulkner is a regional novelist and a novelist who writes books which concern all sensitive people. faulkners novels are seldom easy to read or understand, but they are novels which are immensely satisfying, both because they give the reader such a deep insight into the south and because they give them an equally deep insight into the nature of mankind. because faulkners works do contain so much of the history of the south, it is helpful to see faulkner against the background which gave his inspiration. faulkners family was, by mississippi standards, an old-established one, able to trace its history back to before the civil war of 1861. by the time that william faulkner was born, his family, like many others in the southern states, was declining socially and economically. the civil war, in which the northern states of american had fought the southern states, in part to free the slaves of the south, had a profound effect on the social structure of the area, bringing changes which were unwelcomed to those who had liked the distinctive character of the pre-war south. this distinctive character might be briefly described as hierarchical in nature, consisting of the slaves at the bottom of the social scale and the plantation owners at the top. although faulkner was not in favor of slavery, he shows in his books that the sudden intrusion of the men from the northern states and the abrupt destruction of this southern hierarchy was not a wholly desirable thing. as we see in his novels, the old system had given everyone a sense of identity, from the slaves who could rely on their owners for guidance and food, to the owners who could use the leisure which was born of slave-owning to pursue culture in many shapes and forms. the civil war brought all this to a sudden and unnatural end. the people of the south were not prepared for it and, as we see in faulkners works, they never really succeeded in finding a new identity. those characters that belong to the post-war period do not live in an active way but spend m.a. thesis shanghai jiao tong university dec, 2008 3 their lives in the passive contemplation of the pre-war past while their world continues to decay around them. the great changes of the south let southern people plunge suddenly into confusion about their future: their fortune, their identities, their family life, and their culture, even their social structure is indeterminate. faulkner as a southerner naturally has the same feeling as any of the southern people and naturally practices these postmodernist techniques in his writings. faulkners own family was not unlike some of those he describes in his novels. his great-grand father, colonial william faulkner was held in great esteem by the family for he had been elected colonel of the second infantry of the confederate states army during the war and had fought to defend the identity of the south. after the war, he became involved in building a railway which he hoped would extend as far as the gulf of mexico, ran a plantation, founded a college and wrote a play, a travel book and two novels, one of which was a great success. colonel faulkner was elected to the mississippi state governing body in 1889 but was shot that same day by a former business partner who had become a bitter enemy. the faulkner familys fortunes then began to decline. the railway was sold, and before william faulkner was born, his father was employed by a railway company, which once belonged to the faulkners family. william faulkner no doubt heard many stories of the familys past when he was a child and it could not have been long before he realized how comparatively poor and insignificant his family had become since the great days of colonel faulkner. in his novels, it is obvious that faulkner realized that the history of his family was typical of the history of other families in the south and, indeed, of the south itself, a place which had once a distinct and exciting character but which was now a mere shadow of its former self. faulkner in 1924 published a collection of poems. in 1925 his first novel soldiers pay, appeared; few years later a second mosquitoes, was published. it was in 1929, however, in his third novel, sartoris, that faulkner began to record and explore the history of the south. in this book, the mythical county which he called yoknapatawpha appeared. for the rest of his life, faulkner explored the history of this m.a. thesis shanghai jiao tong university dec, 2008 4 place and the nature of its people, moving and forwards in time. from the moment when the very first white settlers came on the scene in go down moses (1942) and requiem for a nun (1951), through the civil war itself and its aftermath, both immediate and long-term. in 1951, in requiem for a nun, faulkner wrote a survey of the whole history of the place up to the moment when the neon lights and concrete roads seemed to have destroyed the last vestiges of distinctly southern identity. faulkners works do not consist of an organized historical review of yoknaptawpha but they are a thorough if piecemeal exploration of both the history and the atmosphere of the place. certain families, notably the compson and the sartoriese, appear frequently in faulkners yoknapatawpha novels. they represent the upper-level of the old social hierarchy, the plantation owners and their descendants who, because they are at the top of social tree, have the furthest to fall when that tree begins to wither and die. the repercussions of the civil war are felt most strongly in these families, successors to the heroes who try to defend the south. below them in the social scale come the landless families. they have less to lose in the civil war and afterwards actually benefited from the changes in the social hierarchy. they have nothing to lose and lack the cunning which enables people to acquire possessions and move upwards socially. some families are only marginally above the negro family in the social hierarchy. in sophistication, indeed, they are beneath some negroes. thus faulkners fictional word is populated with groups who appear many times in his novels and are seen at many different stages in their development. those who are central in one novel may be peripheral in another; an event dealt with from one angle in one novel may be seen from quite a different viewpoint in another; and so, gradually, throughout all his yoknapatawpha novels, faulkner creates a detailed, complex picture of the imaginary county and its occupants. this, however, does not mean that it is necessary to read all his novels in order to understand any particular one. each novel is capable of being read and appreciated in isolation from the rest. the sound and the fury (1929) is a splendid work in its own right and an example of how faulkners novels succeed, individually, in conveying an impression not only of m.a. thesis shanghai jiao tong university dec, 2008 5 the characters they contain but also of the world which those characters inhabit. the basic story of the book is used in an unusual way, acting as the focus of attention for a variety of narrating characters who reveal themselves through telling it. as a novelist faulkner was prepared to experiment with the techniques of fiction in an attempt to bring the reader into the closest possible harmony with the thought patterns of his characters and the mood he wished to convey. postmodernism is no doubt his choice to reflect the actual world through his writings. 1.2 the sound and the fury the sound and the fury was published in 1929, although it was one of the first novels faulkner wrote. many critics and even faulkner himself think that it is the best novel that he wrote. longer and more formally challenging than as i lay dying (1930), the sound and the fury has raised many questions for critics and general readers. faulkner responded to some of these questions in interviews he gave late in his career. as reconstructions of creative work a quarter century in the past, his comments might not be completely reliable, but they provide a fascinating starting point for interpretation. among his novels, the sound and the fury was faulkners favorite because it caused him “the most grief and anguish.” “it began with a mental picture,” he said, “of the muddy seat of a little girls drawers in a pear tree” (norton 240). this image of caddy was tied in faulkners mind with an image of caddys daughter quentin (named after caddys deceased brother), “the fatherless and motherless girl climbing down the rainpipe to escape from the only home she had, where she had never been offered love or affection or understanding.” thus he characterized the novel as “a tragedy of two lost women: caddy and her daughter” (norton 240). the dates of these narrations, with the narrators, are: 1. april 7, 1928 (holy saturday): benjy33 year-old severely retarded man, the youngest of the compson children 2. june 2, 1910: quentinoldest of the compson children, a harvard student, on the day he commits suicide m.a. thesis shanghai jiao tong university dec, 2008 6 3. april 6, 1928 (good friday): jason35 years old, the third of the compson children 4. april 8, 1928 (easter sunday): faulkners own third-person narrator faulkner summarized the emergence of the novel as a process of trial and error: i had already begun to tell it (the story) through the eyes of the idiot child since i felt that it would be more effective as told by someone capable only of knowing what happened, but not why. i saw that i had not told the story that time. i tried to tell it again, the same story through the eyes of another brother. that was still not it. i told it for the third time through the eyes of the third brother. that was still not it. i tried to gather the pieces together and fill in the gaps by making myself the spokesman. it was still not complete, not until 15 years after