身份的命名：论奥康纳《海洋之星》中的饥荒叙事与跨大西洋流散书写

外国文学研究 ›› 2019, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (5): 123-134.

身份的命名：论奥康纳《海洋之星》中的饥荒叙事与跨大西洋流散书写

王路晨

发布日期:2022-05-23
作者简介:王路晨,厦门大学外文学院博士后,主要从事英爱文学研究。
基金资助:
福建省社科规划项目“当代爱尔兰小说文化记忆研究”（FJ2018C070）; 教育部人文社科规划项目“文化批评视阈下的北爱尔兰小说身份认同研究”（19YJC752031）

The Naming of Identity: The Famine Narrative in Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea and the Transatlantic Diasporic Writing

Wang Luchen

Published:2022-05-23
About author:Wang Luchen is a postdoctoral fellow at the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Xiamen University (Xiamen 361005, China), specializing in British and Irish literature. Email: joannawang1986@126.com
Supported by:
“A Study of the Cultural Memory in Contemporary Irish Novel” (FJ2018C070), sponsored by Social Science Fund of Fujian Province; “A Study of the Identity in Northern Ireland Fiction from the Perspective of Cultural Criticism” (19YJC752031), sponsored by Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education.

摘要/Abstract

内容摘要： 大饥荒（1845—1849）是爱尔兰民族历史上的一场浩劫,伊格尔顿称其为“爱尔兰的奥斯维辛”,它所留下了的精神创伤,影响着一代又一代爱尔兰人。奥康纳的《海洋之星》拒绝民族主义/修正主义的传统划分,解构同质化爱尔兰历史版本,打破了围绕饥荒周围的沉默。他通过报刊、书信和日记等多种文体的交织混合,在跨大西洋流散书写中展现“棺材船”上触目惊心的饥饿与死亡场景的同时,探寻了席卷爱尔兰大地的大饥荒：饥荒中死者的残骸不仅是身体上的灭亡,更是身份、命名与意义上的黑洞。小说中的饥荒叙事既涉及维多利亚时期爱尔兰本土性与世界性的关系,又是当代作家对爱尔兰民族特性构成的一次诗性思考。

关键词: 《海洋之星》, 流散书写, 饥荒叙事, 爱尔兰身份

Abstract: The Great Famine(1845—1849), which Terry Eagleton referred to as the “Irish Auschwitz”, is the most devastating catastrophe in the Irish history that has inflicted a haunting psychological trauma upon the Irish generation after generation. Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea (2002) not only unfetters the traditional nationalism/revisionism division and deconstructs the homogeneous versions of Irish history, but also breaks the silence around the Famine. Through a blend of cross-genre writings, such as newspaper articles, letters, and journal entries, O’Connor depicts the horrifying scenes of starvation and death aboard the “coffin ship” and defines the ultimate devastation of the Famine that swept through the whole island in his transatlantic diasporic writing: the scattering of victims’ corpses is both a destruction of human bodies and a black hole of identity, naming and meaning. The Famine narrative of the novel touches upon the relationship between Irish nativeness and cosmopolitanism during the Victorian period and reflects the contemporary Irish writer’s poetic thinking about the formation of the Irish national identity.

Key words: Star of the Sea, diasporic writing, famine narrative, Irishness

王路晨. 身份的命名：论奥康纳《海洋之星》中的饥荒叙事与跨大西洋流散书写[J]. 外国文学研究, 2019, 41(5): 123-134.

Wang Luchen. The Naming of Identity: The Famine Narrative in Joseph O’Connor’s Star of the Sea and the Transatlantic Diasporic Writing[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2019, 41(5): 123-134.

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