（英语语言文学专业论文）《海隅逐客》人物形象的伦理批评.pdf

descriptive chinese abstract i 摘 要 f.r.利维斯 1948 年在伟大的传统一书中称康拉德“位于英语或任何语言 中最伟大的小说家之列” 。自此以后，这位英籍波兰裔的作家便引起越来越多西方 评论家的关注。近年来康拉德更是成为国内学术界的研究热点。但这些研究大都侧重于 黑暗的心 （1899）和吉姆爷 （1900）等几部作品，而对海隅逐客 （1896）则 少有人提及。 文学伦理学是近年来颇受国内学界关注的一种文学批评方法。与社会伦理学不同， 文学伦理学批评的目的在于对文学进行伦理和道德的客观考察并给予历史的辩证解释。 它首先强调这种方法是批评文学的方法，必须同文学的阅读和理解结合在一起，同时又 强调文学的社会责任与道德义务等伦理价值。“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。道德也确实是康拉德小说中最重要的主题之一。运用文学伦理学 分析康拉德的小说可以更深刻地挖掘其中的社会及伦理意义。 海隅逐客是一部具有 丰富道德内蕴的作品。道德在小说角色的塑造中起着不可或缺的作用。道德上的缺陷使 得白人“英雄”堕落成“反英雄”，而原本在殖民话语中“道德低下”的殖民地土著居 民却通过自己的行为实现了道德上的颠覆。 尽管本文可能已经让读者认识到现代英雄的 堕落，但是笔者欲借此说明的是更深刻的主题：即康拉德用反英雄的手法勾勒出了英国 殖民社会更为清晰的道德轮廓，他哀悼了道德理想主义在现实面前的不合时宜，批判了 帝国主义进程中殖民者道德的腐朽堕落，并期待在道德上对读者有所启示。 本文运用文学伦理学批评，以三类不同人物为切入点，以忠诚与背叛这种道德现象 为主线，分析了这三种小说角色的英雄化、反英雄化形象，探讨了道德在其性格塑造方 面的决定性作用，并进而探究其背后深层的社会、政治及文化原因。文章继导论部分介 绍其理论背景和课题价值后， 在第一章首先分析了典型的反英雄威廉斯及其道德上的堕 落；然后在第二章分析了非典型的反英雄林格和他的道德理想主义；第三章把重点放在 实现了道德颠覆的土著居民上，以此与前两章所分析的白人进行鲜明对照，并指出土著 所隐含的英雄特性； 最后在结论部分文章表明当时的帝国与殖民话语以及高速发展的工 业社会是造成这种现象的主要原因，并最终得出结论：只有道德上的正直和行动上的与 时俱进才能使人内心达到平衡进而赢得生活。 关键词：伦理批评；英雄；反英雄；康拉德； 海隅逐客关键词：伦理批评；英雄；反英雄；康拉德； 海隅逐客 english abstract ii abstract since f. r. leavis who comments in his the great tradition (1948): “conrad is among the very greatest novelists in the language or any language” (leavis 257), this polish-born english writer has received constant attention from the critical world, and becomes the hot issue in chinese academe in recent years. however, these researches are confined to conrads works in major phase as heart of darkness (1899) and lord jim (1900) while neglect his early works such as an outcast of the islands (1896). ethical criticism has attracted the domestic critics attention in recent years. different from social ethnics, ethical criticism focuses on ethical, moral and objective review on literature and gives historical dialectical explanation to it. it is a kind of methodology applied to literary criticism, which has to combine literary reading and understanding together and meanwhile to emphasize the social responsibility and moral obligation of literature as well. conrad holds the belief that moral discovery should be the object of every tale and moral is definitely one of the most significant themes in his fictions. the social and ethical significance can be revealed more profoundly by the use of ethical criticism. an outcast of the islands is a work with rich moral significance. morality functions as an important part in the figures characterization. moral defects make white imperial heroes degenerate into anti-heroes, while the former morally inferior natives in imperial discourse achieve moral subversion through their actions. although the present thesis has shown the modern heroes moral corruption, it tries to convey a more profound theme, which is that conrad draws a clear moral outline of english imperial society by anti-heroic characterization, regrets about untimeliness of moral idealism in front of reality, denounces moral degeneration in imperialism courses and expects moral revelation to the readers. in the light of ethical criticism, this thesis examines three different kinds of characters by weaving the moral phenomenon of betrayal and fidelity. it explores morals fundamental function in their characterization and attempts to probe into the deep social reasons. after introducing the theoretical background and significance, this thesis firstly analyzes the explicit anti-hero willems and his moral degeneration, secondly focuses on the implicit anti-hero lingard and his moral idealism and thirdly deals with the moral subversion of the implicit heroes aissa and babalatchi who contrast sharply with the white colonialists. finally in the concluding part, the present thesis indicates that the contemporary imperial and colonial discourse and rapid developing industrialism are the main reasons for heroes vanishing, and draws the conclusion that only by becoming morally upright and positive to social change can people get proper balance in spirit and live more fulfilled lives. key words: ethical criticism; hero; anti-hero; joseph conrad; an outcast of the english abstract iii islands 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 (18571924), the british novelist and short story writer whose major works appeared between 1895 and 1924, is considered one of the most important novelists of twentieth-century writing in english. conrads works mark a shift from the novel as popular entertainment to the novel as high art, an art as carefully crafted as poetry. his experiments in fictional form and narrative prepared the way for the technical innovations of novelists virginia woolf, william faulkner, and john fowles; his characteristic themes of alienation and thwarted heroism and his preoccupation with individuals in remote places have had continuing impact on writers throughout this century. conrad was accepted in the early 1920s as englands greatest living novelist but was pretty well forgotten after his death. thank such critic as f. r. leavis who comments in his the great tradition: “ conrad is among the very greatest novelists in the language or any language.” (leavis 257), this polish-born english writer has received constant attention from the critical world. a mutitude of thesis and works are produced to voice different understandings about its linguistics, stylistic and structural features. as for conrads early works, which although hitherto are restricted to the study of heart of darkness and lord jim in the domestic critical circle, they present rich value to be studied. an outcast of the islands (1896), the second part of conrads malayan trilogy , is especially one of “the most bitterly ironic studies of racism, colonialism, and the complexities of ethnic and religious politics at the local level” (knowles and moore 264). appeared as almayers follys sequel, an outcast of the islands uses the same location and some of the same characters. this work further consolidated conrads critical reputation and was hailed by early reviewers as a romance. he was compared with such highly rated novelists as kipling and stevenson, which implied his work, though overly wordy, challenged comparison with the very best of the era. h. g. wells, whose virtuosity in science fiction brought him great popular success, began his unstable, initially warm, friendship with conrad when he reviewed an outcast of the islands in 1896: “only greatness could make books of which the detailed workmanship was so copiously bad, so well worth reading, so convincing, and so stimulating” (qtd. in watts 205). introduction 0.1 2 the story in this novel happened nearly twenty years earlier than the story in almayers folly. the outcast himself, peter willems, is a somewhat more active, but very much more despicable, version of the youthful almayer. intensely proud of being white, willems marries a half-caste in order to please his employer and thus getting his success; but he is caught stealing money, and is ruined. out of pity lingard offers him a new start in sambir, where almayer naturally resents the new comer. isolated from everyone, and repelled by the threatening tropical environment, willems is overwhlemed by a sense that he has been “left outside the scheme of creation,” although other people “lived, they lived!” (conrad 65; ch.6). in this vacuity, willems falls in love with a beautiful malay girl, aissa; but his “ecstasy of the senses” is soon brought to an end by the hopelessness of his outcast status (conrad 140; ch.13), and his sense that aissa has “destroyed his dignity of a clever and civilized man” (conrad 334; ch.25). willems is eventually forced to betray his benefactor by revealing lingards secret channel up the river to the arab traders. when lingard scornfully refuses his appeals for help, willemss hopes of leaving sambir are finally dashed, and aissa finally shoots him because she finds his love is untrue. 0.1 critical review of an outcast of the islands after decades of critical neglect in which critics have favored his “major phase”, as characterized by lord jim (1900), heart of darkness (1902), nostromo (1904), the secret agent (1907),and under western eyes (1911), conrads earlier novels, such as almayers folly (1895) and an outcast of the islands (1896), gradually receive serious scholarly attention. zdzislaw najder, for example, describes an outcast of the islands as a “dress rehearsal” for lord jim (najder 23). r. a. gekoksi calls it “the novel of an author not quite ready to write lord jim” (gekoski 57). the earliest academic research on conrads malay novels was john d. gordans joseph conrad: the making of a novelist (1941), which was a full-length scholarly study of almayers folly, an outcast of the island and lord jim. gordan identified textual sources and real-life models, and explored the development of the text from manuscript through to the first collected edition (hampson, cross-culture encounter 23). norman sherrys conrads eastern world (1966), with its careful biographical research and meticulous exploration of models and sources, provides an essential starting introduction 0.1 3 point for most research into the whole range of conrads malay fiction. it attempts to recreate the world conrad knew as a seaman in the east of the 1880s, in order to discover what writing suggestions he got, and to follow the processes of creation such “suggestions” went through in becoming the completed works. such search into the sources of specific works reveals the complexity of the eastern word and the complexity of conrads method as a writer. the significance of conrads early malay stories within his oeuvre has been recognized by heliena krenn, who examines how empire, race, and women are handled in her book conrads lingard trilogy: empire, race, and women in the malay novels (1990). many critics have noted the elements of romance in conrads fiction, but until andres whites joseph conrad and the adventure tradition (1993), very little has research focused on how these elements of romance are woven into his work and how they contribute to conrads vision of imperialism. the works of krenn and white have broken new ground in the study of conrads early novels and opened the way for a searching assessment of the romance tropes in the malay tales. based on that, linda drydens joseph conrad and the imperial romance (2000) addresses that gap in conrad studies by placing a quartet of conrads early malay tales, almayers folly, an outcast of the islands, “karain”, and lord jim, in the context of the literature of imperial romance and adventure that was enjoying such popularity when conrad began his literary career. besides, cross-cultural encounters in joseph conrads malay fiction (2000) by robert hampson from a cultural perspective shows that conrads writing of malaysia from the start engaged consciously with the problem of representation of another culture, and, from “karain” onwards, this problem becomes a self-conscious part of his fiction: this is not just a matter of the self-reflexive use of the traditions of adventure romance as in lord jim, but it also manifests itself in the fictions foregrounding of writing, reading and the production of narrative in its presentation of cross-cultural encounters. however, compared with almayers folly, an outcast of the islands receives less critical attentions among the conradian scholars. it always appears as a neglected part of conrads early malay fictions. to date, the only comprehensive study of its textual issues in the novel is mary gifford belchers unpublished ph. d dissertation “a critical edition of an outcast of the islands”. thus, it is necessary and feasible to do some research especially on introduction 0.2 4 an outcast of the islands. 0.2 the feasibility and significance of the research my thesis will focus on conrads moral concern in his novel an outcast of the islands by analyzing the anti-heroic characters. i choose an outcast of the islands to do my thesis research because of its manifold significance. firstly, an outcast of the islands is a remarkable book, though many would not consider it to be one of conrads best novels. it is not an artistic masterpiece, but is nevertheless remarkable because of its innovations. in this novel, conrad questions colonial attitudes, undermines the romance tradition, and creates perhaps the first true anti-hero in the british novel. more than simply to invert the romance form, though, conrad creates an anti-hero in order to investigate the nature of moral rectitude. because conrad refuses to posit absolute truths, moral rectitude is based upon the mutual acceptance of communal morals by its members. the ideas of community and solidarity are important to conrad because they provide for physical and psychological comfort. when an individual betrays others, the sole thread holding the individual to society is cut. secondly, the thesis aims to explore how and why the traditional hero in romance degenerates to anti-hero, and human alienates to inhuman. the reason relates closely to colonialism of britain then. my research might contribute little to the on-going racial and imperial conversation. in addition, britain was in the process of modernization at that time. the decline of traditional moral belief and change of peoples structures of feeling also give reasons for the degeneration. the situation presented in the second example is similar to our chinese situation now. likewise, modernization has been carried through for years in china. we are facing the same moral dilemma and confusion as the english people did a hundred year ago. it might be helpful for us to realize our situation more clearly by analyzing this novel. thirdly, according to the foregoing analysis, we can see that the exploration of anti-hero figures in an outcast of the islands from ethical perspective in china is still in blank, and using ethical criticism may redound to the return of literature ethical value. i think these are the most important function and significance of my thesis. introduction 0.3 5 0.3 methodology and arrangement of content my thesis will analyze the anti-heroic characters in an outcast of the islands in the light of ethical criticism, so it is necessary to introduce this theory first. ethics do not just to answer “how to live well” or “what is wrong and what is right”. they deal with the moral complexity of lifewhich needs extraordinary insights. 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 morality in literature. ethics and criticism have a “logical connection”, because a concern for meaning and truth is the basis of criticism (eagletone 21). perhaps the root of ethical criticism in the western cultural tradition belongs to plato, who drove imitative poets out of his republic because mimetic poetry conveys a morally deleterious message to its readers. plato self-consciously admits that a fictional text can be a receptacle of morally instructive significance. his methodological example yields a skeletal definition of ethical criticism as a reflexive process by which a text is consciously read for its potential to yield some standard for human conduct, a standard that then becomes the locus for further critical scrutiny. while plato may have sincerely feared that ethical criticism had the potential to corrupt the moral education of greek culture, such criticism was practiced as a matter of course until this century. indeed, when literary theorists like horace, sidney, johnson, shelly, and arnold took the primary functions of literature to be delight and instruction, they were duplicating the critical gestures acknowledged in platos formula. its commonplace for nearly twenty-five hundred years notwithstanding, ethical literary criticism is now at a crucial juncture, having suffered charges of illegitimacy for most of the twentieth century, the charge against the practice of ethical criticism generally incorporate one or more of the following basic contentions: (1) ethical criticism is mono-logic, reductive, and proselytizing and thus does violence to the aesthetic complexities of literature in order to promote a critics moral agenda; (2) ethical criticism covertly endorses elitist and/or oppressive ideologies; (3) ethical criticism has no claim to objectivity and can never end in anything but opinion, which is not knowledge; (4) in its attempt to find a stable ideological position in a medium as indeterminate as language, ethical criticism ignores the rhetorical dimension of signification; (5) ethical criticism tries to standardize interpretation by introduction 0.3 6 threatening the exegetical freedom burgeoning from literary modernism and anti-essentialist philosophy (krapp 3). a common denominator of all of these objections is what they perceive as ethical criticisms tendency to thematic interpretation, to make reductive, dogmatic, mono-logic claims about the moral content of a literary text. this fear is indeed legitimate, but if one looks carefully, it becomes quite clear that the word ethical might be