【作者】 王欣；

【导师】 袁德成；

【作者基本信息】 四川大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2005， 硕士

【摘要】 本论文着力探索福克纳在其《我弥留之际》中“老故事”的意义以及“最佳方法”的使用。传统上宇宙的构架是层次化的,但混乱却随着秩序的崩溃而发生。自然中的冲突回应着人性的双重性和死亡的本能。在《我弥留之际》中,人物都具有双重的角色:受害者和施虐者。语言和时间在象征阶段的介入,促使这些人物和母性的联系分裂,从而成为“向死而生”的牺牲者。在这个意义上,本德伦一家人是在疏离和幻灭中一群处于“弥留之际”的人。但同时,在遭遇了史诗性的洪水和烈火的考验后,人性非但没有得到升华,其黑暗的一面反而使他们沦为复仇的野兽。嗜血的渴望驱动他们在彼此身上找寻施虐的对象,却丝毫未意识到自己沦为下一个受害者的命运。弑父,弑母、弑兄、弑婴的主题肆虐于小说人物的生活中,将他们的世界影射成了艾略特笔下的荒原。因此,本书的题目,《我弥留之际》不是指涉小说中某一具体人物,而是反映了战后现代社会人们的处境。 秩序的混乱和世界的毁灭不是轰然而溃,而是在一瞥之中,一声哀鸣里,随着古老美德的消融而亡。为了讲述关于人的内在冲突的“老故事”,福克纳的《我弥留之际》的叙事构架采用了同心圆和多角度讲述的模式。其中,叙事的交流通过视角、声音和人物的塑造而完成。为了探索福克纳叙事策略中的“最佳方法”,本文将从叙事学的角度出发,分析本德伦世界的倒塌,并侧重于对叙事聚焦、叙事声音、以及人物分析方面。这些技更多还原

【Abstract】 This thesis intends to explore the meaning of Faulkner’s "old story" and the use of his "best methods" in his major work As I Lay Dying. The cosmos is traditionally constructed by the hierarchy, but chaos easily intervenes with the collapse of order. The strife in the universe is response to human nature which generates doubling with the death instincts. Characters in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying are doubled with two personas: the victimizer and the victimized. Under the scythe of Father Time, they rupture with the maternal tie and become the same waiting sacrifice. In this sense, the Bundrens are a group of people who "lay dying" in alienation and disillusionment. But they are also incarnated into Furies as well. In thirsty for blood, they take revenge on each other in unaware of their own fate as the next prey. Patricide, matricide, fratricide and infanticide prevail in the fictional lives and turn their world as a metonymy of T.S. Eliot’s waste land. Thus the title As I Lay Dying is dedicated not to any single man, but to all human beings in the modern world.The world is not ended with a bang but a glimpse, a whimper, a way of slow disintegration of old virtues. As an attempt to analyze the "best methods" in Faulkner’s narrative strategies, I resort to narratological perspective which emphasizes the investigation of narrative focalization, narrative voices and characters. These techniques not only involve the double-decoding on the planes of "story" and "discourse", but also invite other concerns on psychological and social critical framework, especially on Lacan’s theory.The thesis falls into three chapters. Chapter I discusses the exploitation of perspectives, especially on Darl’s focalization. Dart’s perspective plays the role as the first person internal perspective, the first person external perspective, and the third person internal variable perspective. His glimpse shatters the family hierarchy and creates a dreamy, grotesque atmosphere in the text. In the violation of the principle of verisimilitude, Darl’s perspectivesprove the doubling of his personality: the victimizer and the victimized. The second chapter examines different voices in AS I Lay Dying: the phenomenal voice, mimetic voice and psychic voice. Phenomenal voices define the character’s relation to the world, while mimetic voices transcribe the Mississippi farmer’s colloquial talk. The Southern humor and biblical usage are adopted mainly on those not-Bundrens. To portray characters’ inner thought, Faulkner also exploits different discourse patterns including soliloquy, free association, and interior monologue. And since all young Bundrens concentrate on Addie and her death, their interior monologues achieve harmony by the flux of consciousness and shared secrets. The discussion of "different characters" in chapter three focuses on the Bundren family. Greimas’s actant model shows the inter-relative connections among them. The young Bundrens seek a psychic return to the imaginary union and substitute the maternal void with different substitutes. Yet in the symbolic stage, the paternal force intervenes with a symbol of time. Thus everyone becomes the inevitable victim. Dart’s doubling proliferates, Cash, Jewel and Dewey Dell also have doubled to be both victimizer and victimized.In the whole, death and doubling are products of entangled social forces, tinged with post-war disillusionment and Southern loss. As a result, the two motifs in William Faulkner’s major works have transcended the restriction of time and transformed his Yoknapatawpha series into the old story "which haven’t changed too much since man first found how to record".更多还原