【作者】 叶旭军；

【导师】 朱炯强；

【作者基本信息】 浙江大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2002， 硕士

【副题名】评亨利·詹姆斯《淑女画像》

【摘要】 《淑女画像》是亨利·詹姆斯早期最负盛名的代表作，被公认为詹姆斯最好的作品和英语文学中的上乘之作，也是詹姆斯文学生涯中的一部里程碑式的作品。就小说结构的严密、风格的清新流畅、艺术表现手法的新颖独到，对社会问题和时代变化的敏感，甚至仅就篇幅以及它对女主人公的意识所进行的细腻探索而言，《淑女画像》都堪与十九世纪欧洲小说的杰作相媲美。 笔者以为这部小说最主要价值在于其深刻广博的主题和独具匠心的艺术表现手法。本文将分三部分着重从这两方面予以探讨。 第一部分主要介绍詹姆斯不同寻常的成长过程、教育背景和广博的人生阅历及其对作者文学创作所产生的深刻影响。第二部分将深入透析作品丰富的主题。“国际性主题”一直是詹姆斯钟爱的主题，也是作品中压倒一切的主题。《淑女画像》在更广泛的规模与更深刻的程度上再现了无辜与腐蚀的对立。《淑女画像》作为一幅描绘单纯无辜的美国人在世故狡诈的欧洲社会的生活画卷，是其它同时代作品所难以企及的。同时，詹姆斯描写和理解女性意识的能力在《淑女画像》中得到了充分的体现。维多利亚时期女性社会地位问题是詹姆斯在作品中竭力要凸现的另一大主题。通过伊莎贝尔的爱情和婚姻悲剧，詹姆斯深刻地揭示了男女平等、平等的婚姻关系，对维多利亚时期的女性来说仍是遥不可及的奢望。作品最后以詹姆斯式弃绝的方式结尾，不露声色地将意识升华同人生的失败联系起来，并拒绝预测人物未来的命运，打破了小说以大团圆结局的传统窠臼。这一詹姆斯式弃绝行为引起了读者和评论界的广泛探讨。笔者以为对此，应该首先是根据小说对“自由”可能有的几种意义所进行的多方探索来加以理解：伊莎贝尔从她初始的美国式的信仰，即无视任何限制的独立性出发，逐渐形成了一种在很大程度上属于意识状态的自由感，这是一种自我冲突的自由，即一方面承认自身自由所受的局限，一方面以正视自由所要求的选择责任。本文第三部分将着重分析作品中所运用的两种新颖的艺术表现手法：意识中心的叙述视角和象征性意象。特别值得指出的是在作品中詹姆斯第一次冲破了小说写作的传统方式，小说的事件与情节通过主人公的内心活动自然展开。作者细致地描绘了伊莎贝尔各种细腻的心理变化及感受，外部世界是通过她的内心活动得到表现的。随着伊莎贝尔对其经历在认识上的逐步深入，詹姆斯一步步将他的这部国际题材剧变成了意识剧。为了表现伊莎贝尔幽深、细致的意识活动，作者巧妙地运用了形象和象征技巧。在《淑女画像》中，詹姆斯一再借用房屋和庭院花园形象表现了伊莎贝尔从无知到成熟过程中的感倩变化。不仅烘托了主题而且增强了小说的艺术感染力。借用形象和象征表现人物的内心精神活动是詹姆斯心理现实主义的一大重要方法。 本文所议浅尝辄止。《淑女画像》这一宏篇巨著有待我们进一步深入悉心探讨。更多还原

【Abstract】 The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James’s early best-known masterpiece, is commonly acknowledged as his best and a great work in English literature. It is also a landmark achievement in his literary career. In the very thickness of its texture, its crisp and smooth style, its innovative techniques, its shrewd glimpses of social anxiety and change, even its sheer scale as well as its subtle probing of its heroine’s consciousness, The Portrait of a Lady bears comparison with the major achievements of nineteenth century European fiction.The most striking strength of the novel, as I read it, mainly lies in its rich and profound themes, new and original techniques, into which my thesis will explore in three chapters.The first chapter is to deal with Henry James’s personal background and how his unusual upbringing and cosmopolitan personal experience influence his literary creation, which I hope can better our understanding ofHenry James and his work under discussion coming in the next two chapters. The second part will make a penetrating probe into the novel’s rich and profound themes. "International Theme" has been James’s great literary subject, and is the dominant theme in The Portrait. The Portrait has revealed the clash between the American innocence and European corruption in a more powerful and profound scale. As a picture of American moving in the expatriate society of Europe, this novel has no equal in the history of modern literature. James’s extraordinary capacity for representing and identifying with a female consciousness, becomes apparent in The Portrait. Victorian woman situation is another theme, by which we come to recognize the author’s masterful hand. Through Isabel’s love and tragic marriage, James profoundly revealed that equality of sexes, marriage of reciprocal mastery, were culpably remote from the social reality. The novel ended with Jamesian renunciation. Terminating in such gestures of renunciation, implicitly linking heightened consciousness with loss, refusing to forecast the heroine’s fate, James’s narratives repeatedlydefy the convention of the "happy ending". Such an irregular denouement piques heated discussions among critics and readers as well. Isabel’s final gesture, as I read it, should primarily be read in the context of the novel’s extended exploration of the possible meanings of "freedom": from her original, prototypically American belief in an independence that defies all limits, Isabel gradually arrives at a sense of freedom that is largely a state of consciousness-the paradoxical freedom of a self that deliberately accepts its own constraints and faces responsibility for the choices that it makes. The third chapter will mainly study the two innovative artistic devices employed in the novel: "central consciousness" point of view and symbolic imagery. In the novel, by placing the center of the subject in the young woman’s own consciousness, James begins to reverse the whole idea of fictional narrative. The whole story is developed through Isabel’s inner awareness and inward movement rather than the external events. It is Isabel’s consciousness that comes increasingly to dominate the whole novel. With Isabel’s awakening to the meaning of her experience, James graduallytransforms his international drama into a drama of consciousness. In order to depict Isabel’s subtle consciousness, James ingenuously uses the symbolic imagery of houses and gardens to emphasize the essentially inward nature of Isabel’s experience from innocence to maturity. To use symbol and image to reveal characters’ inward movement is one of the major methods of James’s psychological realism. It highlights the themes, appeals to our imagination and adds richness to the novel.My thesis is just a superficial research. James’s The Portrait, so great and magnificent a work is worth our further studying.更多还原