【作者】 程颖；

【导师】 陈立华；

【作者基本信息】 华中师范大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2007， 硕士

【副题名】解读爱伦·坡哥特小说中恐怖的审美价值

【摘要】 爱伦·坡是美国独具特色的作家之一。与他同时代的美国文豪都以浪漫的笔调勾画着童年美国的形象，而坡却在描写凶杀、暴力和死亡，沉醉于梦、死、恶的主题，常常采用哥特式的怪诞与恐怖去揭示人类与周边世界疏远、隔离和残酷现实的恐怖。在当时的社会文化背景下，死亡、恐怖进入人们审美视野的时间还不长，我们可以想象爱伦·坡要得到同时代人的理解和赏识是多么困难。由于他的创作手法和文学理论与当时的文学环境格格不入，坡在文学界的声誉一直不好。他的创作直到二十世纪才开始受到了学术界的广泛重视。本文第一部分主要介绍了爱伦·坡的生平和文学创作，探讨了坡为什么要写恐怖小说及国内外对坡小说的研究现状。爱伦·坡对哥特式恐怖小说做出了极大的贡献。他独特的生活经历和对哥特文学传统、美国文学传统的继承构成了他创作恐怖小说的背景。坡继承了十八世纪哥特小说的传统，并在此基础上进行了大胆的创新，使哥特小说心理化。坡的小说在一定程度上成为美国南方小说的源头。国内外学者从各个层面、运用各种理论对爱伦·坡的创作进行了深入的研究，但在坡的小说中对恐惧进行分类这个问题上没有做过细致的分析，大多停留在感觉的表面。本文第二部分试图追溯西方传统美学理论中关于恐怖的审美价值，运用西方美学理论中的悲剧美学理论和崇高美学理论为下文中对坡的哥特小说中的独特美学价值的分析提供理论依据。第三部分是从坡的宇宙观入手对坡的作品中的恐惧类型进行分类。坡在作品中深刻地揭示出人们本能的对超自然的恐惧，对虚无、死亡的恐惧，对人性本恶、对人格分裂的恐惧，他竭力向人们证明“恐怖的源头在于人的心灵”。第四部分是将理论与文本分析结合起来，探索坡的哥特小说中的这几种恐怖类型给人们带来的审美享受：使人们的心灵得到净化与升华，并产生一种壮美的崇高感。第五部分探讨坡是采取哪些手段达到上文提到的审美效果。通过象征、悬念、第一人称叙述、气氛渲染、开放性结局这些手段，坡字斟句酌、精雕细刻地在故事中营造出了一种完整统一地神秘恐怖、震撼人心地效果。通过以上分析，本文得出总结：坡的哥特式恐怖小说为读者贡献了美的享受，在对恐怖与邪恶的刻画中，他完成了人的心灵升华与净化的审美作用，其哥特小说丰富了文学审美理论，开辟了美国南方文学的新领域。更多还原

【Abstract】 Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most unique writers in America. Many men of letters in America of his same age depicted an America in its childhood by adopting a romantic tone, while Poe’s themes were mainly about killing、violence、death、nightmare and evil. He always disclosed the alienation and isolation between human and the world around them and the terror of the cruel society by using the gothic horror and grotesquery. Under the social and cultural background at that time in America, it’s not long for the death and horror enter people’s aesthetic vision. We can imagine how hard it is for Poe to gain the understanding and appreciation of his contemporaries. As his creative techniques and literary theories are totally different from the main stream in the field of literature in his time, Poe had been misunderstood by readers and his contemporaries for quite a long time. It was until the 20^th century that the importance of Poe’s literary creations had been recognized extensively by the academic world.Part One is an introduction, in which I briefly introduce Poe’s literary status, the reason that Poe chose to write gothic from the three aspects: his life experiences; influence from the British gothic novel; influence from American literature traditions, and then a literature review on the study of Poe both home and abroad.Part Two presents an investigation of the aesthetic value of horror in western traditional aesthetic theory. In this part, I first look back to the origin of aesthetics, then I analyze why horror can be taken as an aesthetic subject mainly from three aspects: What is ugly is also beautiful; Aristotle’s theory of tragedy; Burke’s theory of sublimity and beauty. Lastly I get the conclusion of this part: the power of horror is to cause the delights of pain in human soul.Part Three presents the types of horror in Poe’s gothic fictions. After reading Poe’s works we always feel an unspeakable horror from our soul, so what are we frightened at? This problem has not been analyzed particularly, most of the analysis just stops at the surface. In this part I will explore the horror from human soul from the stand point of Poe’s view of universe. Horror is a kind of instinct, is one of the most strong feelings of human kind. In Poe’s story, we can feel the horror to supernatural in "MS. Found in a Bottle"; the horror to death in "The Premature Burial"; the horror to evil of human nature in "The Black Cat"; but among all these different kinds of horror, nothingness is most horrible. Human can be frightened at the tangible monsters, or be frightened at crimes in reality, but the degree of being frightened can not be compared to the horror to nothingness. We can experience the inherent innominate and enormous horror in Poe’s works.Part Four is to connect the theory with the text analysis and analyze what kind of aesthetic values are produced from the horror of Poe’s gothic fiction: horror produces sublimity; horror brings purification of human soul.Part Five presents the means Poe adopted to achieve the aesthetic effects in his fictitious texts. By means of symbol, suspense, first person narrator, exaggeration of atmosphere and open ending, Poe tried his best to construct an intact and uniform, mysterious and shaking effect.According to the analysis above, we come to such a conclusion: since horror brings us so much pain, why there are still so many people infatuated in Poe’s gothic fictions? Because we can find beauty from horror and experience the aesthetic pleasure. In terms of this, horror is beautiful and pleasant. Poe’s gothic fictions offer the enjoyment of beauty for the readers and made his own particular contribution to the world literary history.更多还原