（英语语言文学专业论文）论《邪恶的躯体》中的反讽.pdf

iii 论 邪恶的躯体 中的反讽 研究生 何松倍 年级 2006 级 学科专业 英语语言文学 指导老师 张叔宁 研究方向 英美文学 内容摘要 伊夫林 沃在英国二十世纪的文坛以反讽著称 被誉为 英国文学史上最具摧毁力和 最有成果的讽刺小说家之一 其作品在西方多次再版或被改成电影 引起越来越多文论 家的关注 他继承了英国文学中的反讽传统 以犀利而幽默的笔调描绘了一幅一战后英国 的社会现实之画 涵盖了政治 文化 社会风俗以及人性等诸多方面 毫无疑问 反讽是 沃小说的显著特色 也是他及其作品直到今天还广受欢迎的原因之一 反讽不仅是沃小说 的重要艺术手段 也是沃看待 领悟世界的一种方式 然而 到今天国内对伊夫林 沃的研究还不够充分和深入 研究他的学者和资料都比 较少 现有的资料多是关于其某些写作技巧 尚缺乏完整性和系统性 关于其成名作 邪 恶的躯体 的研究更是稀少 本文以小说 邪恶的躯体 为个案进行文本细读 分析 通过运用反讽 张力等理论 分别从修辞手段和意识形态这两个层面阐释作品的反讽艺术体现 希望本文能为全面深入 的探讨沃的反讽艺术和 邪恶的躯体 做一些基础性的工作 全文分为六个部分 第一部分是引言部分 主要叙述国内外对沃及其作品的研究现状 指出其取得的成就 和存在的问题 并说明本文的研究方法和重点 由于反讽是沃的主要的艺术手段 本文将 重在阐释 邪恶的躯体 中的反讽艺术 第二部分简单回顾了从古希腊时期到今天的反讽发展历程 介绍了反讽的主要特征和 在沃作品中的体现 第三部分结合文本分析 邪恶的躯体 中的反讽主题 从人生主题和社会主题这两个 方面进行叙述 第四部分分析 邪恶的躯体 中的反讽特点 反讽既指语言层面的修辞技巧 也指暗 含在人物 情节 场景中的与表面的句子意思相悖的对比 对照技巧 第五部分讨论 邪恶的躯体 中的反讽艺术的美学价值 反讽是一种文体表达方法 也是一种人生观 观察 领悟世界的一种方式 它从修辞格发展成为一种具有普遍意义的 创造原则 构成小说内在价值的重要组成部分 最后是结语部分 对全文进行总结 通过与前人的对比 对沃的反讽艺术做出自己的 评价 笔者认为他是二十世纪一流的反讽作家 关键词 伊夫林 沃 邪恶的躯体 反讽 iv on the irony of vile bodies postgraduate he songbei grade 2006 major field of study english language one of his novels is filmized which attracts more and more attention from critics inheriting the ironical tradition in british literature he depicts in a trenchant and humourous tone of writing a real picture of british social reality after world war including politics culture social custom and human nature there is no doubt that irony is a distinct character of evelyn waugh s novels and one of the reasons why he and his works are still very popular nowadays irony is not only an important artistic technique in his novels but also a way of seeing the world to him however the research on evelyn waugh in our country hasn t been sufficient and thorough yet with small amount of scholars and information making an intensive study of him most of the present materials are about some of his writing skills lacking of integrity and system study vile bodies which makes him famous is studied much rarely by people based on serious perusal and analysis of the text of vile bodies the author will expatiate upon the application and presentation of ironical art at the two levels of rhetoric technique and ideology with the hope to do some foundational job for researching on evelyn waugh s ironical art and vile bodies more comprehensively and in depthly this thesis includes six parts the first part is introduction mainly narrating the researching actuality of evelyn waugh and his works at home and abroad pointing out the acquired achievement and existing problems meanwhile it explains researching method and keystone using in this thesis the author will mainly expatiate on the application and representation of irony because irony is waugh s important writing technique the second part reviews briefly the historical development of irony from ancient greece to modern times and the main characteristics of irony reflected in evelyn waugh s writings the third part analyzes the ironical theme of vile bodies including life theme and social one the fourth part analyzes the ironical skill of vile bodies irony can refer to rhetoric technique at the level of language meanwhile it can refer to the technique of contrast and which is different from sentence meaning existing implied in characters plots and scenes v the fifth part discusses the aesthetic value of ironical art in vile bodies irony is a way of style expression and is a kind of philosophy and a way of seeing and perceiving the world too it has developed from a figure of speech into a sort of universal creative principle composing an important part of the inner value of novels the last part is conclusion summing up the whole thesis the author comes to the conclusion that evelyn waugh is the first rate ironical writer in the 20th century through comparing with former writers keywords evelyn waugh vile bodies irony 论文独创性声明 本人郑重声明 所提交的学位论文是本人在导师的指导下进行的研究工作及取得的成果 除文中已 经注明引用的内容外 本论文不含其他个人或其他机构已经发表或撰写过的研究成果 对本文的研 究作出重要贡献的个人和集体 均已在文中以明确方式标明 本人承担本声明的法律责任 研究生签名 日期 论文使用授权声明 本人完全了解广西师范大学有关保留 使用学位论文的规定 广西师范大学 中国科学技术信息研 究所 清华大学论文合作部 有权保留本人所送交学位论文的复印件和电子文档 可以采用影印 缩印或其他复制手段保存论文 本人电子文档的内容和纸质论文的内容相一致 除在保密期内的保 密论文外 允许论文被查阅和借阅 可以公布 包括刊登 论文的全部或部分内容 论文的公布 包 括刊登 授权广西师范大学学位办办理 研究生签名 日期 导 师签名 日期 ii acknowledgements i am much grateful to all of those who have assisted me in the composition of this thesis first and foremost i am greatly indebted to my supervisor professor zhang shuning who has given me the most precious instructions in the process of my writing this thesis from the topic choosing to the rough drafts and the final version he has given me invaluable suggestions with great patience i remember that three years ago when i was still a beginner of english literature he warm heartedly recommended me various famous works which have profound influence on me all my life without his generous help and the accumulation of literary knowledge i wouldn t finish my thesis on time i would like to extend my hearty thanks to professor lu xiaohong who teaches me world literature professor liu yuhong who is my teacher of the contemporary british and american literature their strict research attitude has affected me in the quest of knowledge and wisdom i ve learned a lot from you both thank you again my sincere appreciation also goes to all the teachers in the college of foreign studies and my classmates as well as my good friends for all the help they offered in the past three years i have benefited much from them and have three years of wonderful time here which i will never forget in my life i thank you all again sincerely and deeply 1 introduction evelyn waugh aldous huxley and george owell are considered as the three greatest writers of irony in british literary world among them evelyn waugh is honored as one of the most congenital novelists in britain he reflects the confusion contradiction and absurdity in british society of the 20th century as a first rate ironical writer waugh makes great achievements in literature evelyn waugh was born in london in 1903 the son of arthur waugh a literary critic and managing director of chapman the research about him isn t integrated and systemic when compared with the hot research situation abroad firstly not all of waugh s works have been translated into chinese yet he is a productive writer who creates more than ten novels numerous travel notes biographies and comment essays yet some of his important works like black mischief still haven t been translated into chinese until now secondly there exists a research blank on evelyn waugh in synthetical foreign literature books edited by chinese scholars in many universities most students of literature have 2 no idea about evelyn waugh because there is little introduction of him and his works in their teaching materials thirdly the amount of papers using evelyn waugh as a research object is small and those papers aren t profound enough because of lacking of materials about the writer gao jihai a professor in henan university is honored as the first one doing research on evelyn waugh on the novel art of evelyn waugh is his thesis with which he received his doctor s degree in zhang zhongzai s words this thesis explains in detail waugh s creating experience yet lacks depth and profoundity of waugh s artistic characteristics moreover the significance of irony isn t realized fully by people except for some occasional studies by the researchers of evelyn waugh though it plays a very important role in evelyn waugh s novels many critics at home and aboard only regard irony as his writing technique it s a pity that they don t pay much attention to his art of irony evelyn waugh created vile bodies in 1930 when world war one had gone to the end in the 1920s the whole upper class society was full of emptiness and agitation the younger generation the so called bright young people were indulged in luxurious and profligate life in the novel waugh draws a vivid and impressive picture of the fashionable but confusing life of the upper class society with a tone of irony ironizing all the characters appearing in the novel from the canny clergyman to the profligate angels in choir to the false prime minister even to the hero adam and the heroine nina and the bright young people around them the whole novel is in the atmosphere of intense humour and strong irony ralph straus a novelist biographer and journalist in the nineteenth century once said i assure you that vile bodies is one of the drollest and most entertaining affairs that ever strayed into print it is a masterpiece of inconsequence it has irony and the right amount of malice stannard m 1984 95 since irony is a characteristic of the novel this thesis will analyze it from the point of irony among all of evelyn waugh s novels vile bodies brings both international reputation and a large sum of money to him for the first time marking that waugh started to become mature in using irony in his writing career in fact the writing technique theme plot and characters he repeated in his later works come from vile bodies however this important novel hasn t been researched fully and profoundly at home and abroad until now so doing research on this novel is of central significance and the author hopes that the thesis could make some contribution to the research on evelyn waugh 3 chapter 1 a review of irony theory irony a very old and alluring concept has a long history in the literary theory of the west in ancient greece there existed irony at the level of rhetoric at the end of the 18th century irony was endowed with an important meaning at the level of philosophy by some ironists in germany such as friedrich schlegel and karl solger then it was regarded as a principle of structure of poem by the new criticism later it was used from the angle of narratology by wallace martin a famous master of narratology in america its long term development has also led to the rising of many kinds of variants or subcategories such as dramatic irony situational irony verbal irony or rhetoric irony comic irony tragic irony romantic irony today irony is still in the process of extension and revision the multiple meanings and different varieties both of which it has accumulated in western literary aesthetics make it more difficult to understand in the following the author will discuss its definition theory and varieties meanwhile the ironic technique and function applied in evelyn waugh s novel vile bodies will be analyzed preliminarily too irony as an alluring phenomenon has drawn many scholars attention for two millennia years it comes from eironeia which is greek eironeia first appeared in plato s republic denoting deceptiveness through guileful understatement or masking of self in greek dramas it had been adopted as performing manner by some characters who pretended to be ignorant they often said something apparently foolish in front of their rivals yet what they said proved to be true at last so their rivals had to admit to be defeated socrates usually used that method to defeat his opponents as we see in plato s dialogue it was not until aristotle that irony denoted anything than despicable mocking pretense he argued that the definition of irony was to praise someone through blame and to blame someone through praise to him irony means that speakers try to say something but pretend not to want to do it or speakers use the opponent name which is against the truth later two famous rhetors marcus tullius cicero and quintilianus marcus fabius put the concept of irony forward cicero enlarged the scope aristotle demarcated to irony with the argument that irony could not only refer to the opponent meaning but also the meaning different from the sentence meaning in his eyes irony was a way of talking which transferred dissimilar meaning admitted generally quintilianus on the other hand extended ironical rhetoric connecting irony with the background knowledge of listeners in a word traditional irony stays mainly at the level of rhetoric denoting the different meaning other than the sentence meaning it is the contrast between superficial meaning and connotative meaning that forms the condition of irony verbal irony which is often used belongs to ironical technique at the level of rhetoric and waugh uses it in his vile bodies to describe characters scenes and 4 plots which operated effectively part of chapter two will analyze the use of verbal irony in the novel in the late 18th century several german ironists pushed the concept of irony ahead by extending it they developed it to be a principle of writing making it have connotation of philosophy so irony in that period was called philosophy irony friedrich schlegel argued that philosophy is the true home of irony which might be defined as logical beauty for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogue and providing they are not entirely systematical irony ought to be produced and postulated swearingen c j 1991 54 to him irony is the fight between absoluteness and relativity that is to say the probability and inevitability should be recognized when reality is described a writer has to feel paradoxical toward his own works because he not only puts his emotion to them but also elevates himself to a high position where he could survey and create his works objectively the ironical attitude is totally objective indifferent transcendent and controllable to subject matters evelyn waugh accepts the ironical attitude in vile bodies to tell the story without any personal judgement of morality which will be narrated in chapter four in the1940s the new criticism regarded irony as a principle of poetry structure and heightened it as the basic way of thinking and philosophy attitude toward poem cleanth brooks a very important new critic argued that irony as the nature of poems could exist in poems of all ages even in the simplest lyrics he regarded irony as a kind of language phenomenon in which the meaning of any particular item was modified by the context to take a simple instance we say this is a fine state of affairs and in certain context the statement means the opposite of what it purposes to say literally here the romantic use of the word irony refers to situational rather than verbal one to brooks the world in its essence is paradoxical and that an ambivalent attitude alone can grasp its contradictory totality zhu gang 2001 33 the situational irony was furthergrounded by other new critics i a richards for instance said that irony was the bringing in of opposites to form a balance poise and r p warren redefined it in terms of tension the view of new criticism is very significant to understand the aesthetic value of irony art after the concept of irony is used in poetic study many literary theorists use it in the study of novels which makes it become a literary critical term widely used and highly valued hans robert jauses a representative of the acceptive aesthetics considered that novel as one kind of literary form obtains its greatest achievement by ironical works jose ortegay gasset a literary theorist and ideologist in spain thought that irony in essence was one of the elements existing in modern novels he even regarded irony as the definitive sign of modernistic novels the ironical technique such as verbal irony situational irony dramatic irony has a close relationship with context when the words plot and structure errs from or collides with the 5 context irony comes out naturally to sum up during last several centuries irony has developed to be a centrally important literary term with varied meanings at varied levels it denotes rhetoric technique meaning enantiosis or mockery meanwhile it also denotes antithetic skill structure method or suggestion opposing the sentence meaning hiding in characters plots or themes on this basis chapter three will analyse the characteristics of irony in vile bodies irony is not only a way of writing but also a way of thinking and philosophy it has become a universal principle of writing from rhetoric in narrative writing turning into an important part of the inner value of novels many modern scholars use it to inquire effectiveness of traditional arts literae humaniores ethnics and value system evelyn waugh is a representative writer of irony who adopts this skill to express the dilemma in which modern people survive and the complication of human beings real emotion chapter four will explore aesthetic value of irony from this angle indeed irony has a very long history in britain lots of famous british writers treated irony as an important component of their works such as pope swift austin and bernard shaw evelyn waugh as a follower inherits the tradition of irony and enriches it which we could see in his novels he adopts many ironical methods including pun paradox innuendo counterpoint thickness absurd consequence and ironical imitation as we mentioned previously evelyn waugh s irony art also exists in characters plots and themes so in his works the content and structure hides deeper meaning which has dramatic effect and tension on the works to him irony is not only an open way of thinking but also a way of seeing the world manifesting his acute insight and profound critical consciousness 6 chapter 2 the ironical theme in vile bodies in the late 1920s the young generation in britain called the bright young people lived a luxurious and dissolute life after world war i there existed an atmosphere of emptiness and agitation in the whole upper class society evelyn waugh was twenty five years old at that time when his wife was going to have affair with another man and their divorce happened several months later tracing back that special period we can find out that waugh got some important inspiration from both the outside world and his personal life as he wrote vile bodies it turned out to be a successful novel bringing him a large sum of money and an excellent reputation for the first time more importantly laying the first stone for his mature writing style many lit