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佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿小说中的民俗文化研究

On the Folkloric Representations in the Fiction of Zora Neale Hurston  

【作者】张玉红 【导师】虞建华

【作者基本信息】上海外国语大学，英语语言文学，2008年，博士


【中文摘要】 本论文以佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿的三部长篇小说为研究对象,运用文化人类学、民俗学、解构主义以及身份建构等相关理论,结合小说生成的历史文化语境,对其中的民俗文化元素进行尝试性的阐释。众所周知,文化有雅与俗、精英与大众、现代与传统之分。民俗文化属于文化二分法中的后者,即一种在大众中流行的传统文化。民俗文化由于其草根性往往受到精英知识分子的蔑视,斥之为“粗俗”、“野蛮”而难登大雅之堂,然而它却以非凡的生命力顽强地生存在世界文化生态系统之中,展现出迷人的魅力,成为人类生活中一道亮丽的风景线。例如,非洲民俗文化曾经由于缺乏文字记载而“养在深闺人未识,”后来又由于奴隶贸易的兴起而遭到贬抑。美国黑人民俗文化则从诞生之初就因其文化主体的屈辱地位而被流放于美国文化的边缘,然而他们并未消亡,相反,却如夏日的野草一般在夹缝中求生存,在边缘上求发展,生长得郁郁葱葱。奴隶贸易几近结束之时,欧洲人在非洲的探险和传教活动使人们有可能从文化人类学的新视角去理解和把握非洲传统文化,而对美国黑人民俗文化的研究和了解则要更晚一些。十九世纪末,随着文化人类学理论的进步,文化相对主义观念开始盛行,美国黑人民俗文化才开始得到应有的关注。在此之前,在白人种族主义思想的阴影下,在政治和经济生活领域处于弱势的黑人群体在文化领域亦同样处于不利地位。他们的文化在白人主流话语中处于被定义的客体地位,由于定义主体的偏见而往往被曲解,同时黑人又用非暴力不合作的方式抵制白人人类学家猎奇式的研究,因此美国南方黑人民俗文化的“庐山真面目”很难为外人所知晓。二十世纪初,博厄斯人类学在美国的兴起掀起了研究美国黑人民俗文化的热潮。到二十年代中期,在黑人知识分子的推波助澜下,追逐黑人民俗文化形成了一种时尚。哈莱姆文艺复兴就是在这样的文化语境中蓬蓬勃勃地发展起来的。成名于这一新黑人文化运动时期的美国黑人女作家佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿(1891-1960)作为一名土生土长的南方人,从小浸润在丰富多彩的黑人民俗文化传统之中,对其极其熟悉和热爱,再加上她后来师从美国人类学之父哥伦比亚大学教授博厄斯学习人类学,并两次到南方进行民俗调查,所有这些孕育了赫斯顿强烈的黑人民俗文化意识,增强了她传播正宗的黑人民俗文化的历史使命感。从传记批评的角度看,民俗文化走进她的小说创作也是情理之中的事情。赫斯顿是一位多产作家。在持续了将近三十年的文学创作生涯中,她出版了四部长篇小说:《约拿的葫芦蔓》(1934)、《他们眼望上苍》(1937)、《摩西,山之人》(1939)及《苏旺尼的六翼天使》(1948);另外还有短篇小说、剧本和散文五十多篇。此外,她还是一位民俗学家,出版了两部极富文学性的民俗学著作《骡与人》(1935)和《告诉我的马》(1938)。正如作为民俗学家的赫斯顿把文学的叙事策略移植于自己的民俗学著作中一样,作为文学家的赫斯顿同样把民俗学的元素揉进了自己的文学创作之中,因而形成了别具一格的民俗文学风格。她的文学作品大多充满浓郁的黑人民俗文化风情。囿于时间的限制,本论文选取作家具有代表性的三部反映黑人生活的长篇小说作为研究对象,对黑人民俗文化元素的历史和社会功能进行分析和探讨。赫斯顿一生中只有四部长篇小说出版,其中前三部都浓墨重彩地表现了黑人民俗文化,由此可见黑人民俗文化在其小说中占有举足轻重的地位。然而迄今为止,国内外研究赫斯顿的专家学者似乎仍在步艾丽斯·沃克的后尘,把目光聚焦于其代表作《他们眼望上苍》的女性意识上,而忽略了其小说中显著的黑人民俗文化特征。从文化视角出发,结合小说生成的历史语境,对赫斯顿三部长篇小说的主题关注进行解读倒不失为一种有益的尝试。透过新的视角,看到的是一种别样的风景,从而对赫斯顿的民俗小说产生新的认识和理解。从接受的角度看,赫斯顿的民俗小说远非一帆风顺。小说面世之初就受到了同代人的抨击。以赖特为代表的抗议派作家和以洛克为代表的中产阶级知识分子指责赫斯顿“只会讨好白人”、“缺乏现实感”等。这些批评者从各自的角度出发按照自己的审美标准对赫斯顿的小说做出了自己的评判,各有其道理。然而本论文认为,把赫斯顿的小说置于其生成的特定历史和文化语境中进行考察,似乎更为公正合理。生活于种族主义仍根深蒂固的二十世纪初,有着受白人种族歧视经历的赫斯顿,作为一名受过高等教育的黑人知识分子,她没有理由不为种族平等而呐喊。更何况正如罗伯特?潘?沃伦所言,“种族问题在每个南方人的心中,”作为一个南方黑人,赫斯顿必然关注种族问题。面对种族偏见和歧视,反抗的方式存在着个体差异。有人会直接抗议,控诉白人种族主义的罪行,而有人则会采用间接的方式挑战白人优越论。赖特属于前者,而赫斯顿属于后者。赫斯顿对种族问题的关注体现在其小说中对黑人民俗文化的表征上。在其小说中,赫斯顿运用了大量的黑人民俗文化元素,其功能有二。其一、民俗文化表征是赫斯顿民俗小说的生存策略;其二、民俗文化是赫斯顿凸显有别于白人文化的民族文化特征,重构黑人文化身份的媒介。正如哈莱姆文艺复兴的倡导者之一詹姆斯?威尔顿?约翰逊所言,当时的黑人作家面临着“双重读者群”的困境,白人读者群和黑人读者群,只能二择其一,很难同时迎合两者的审美趣味。黑白两个读者群有着迥异的阅读期待,黑人读者期待黑人作家直接描写种族冲突,抗议种族偏见和歧视,而黑人丰富多彩的民俗文化则是白人读者群的兴趣所在。生活在充满敌意的白人主流社会,赫斯顿作为一名作家试图二者兼顾,她给自己的小说戴上了民俗文化的美丽面纱,从而使其有机会被白人主流出版商接受和出版,成功地被白人批评家和普通读者所阅读,这本身就是黑人作家在文化领域内与种族主义作斗争所取得的一种胜利。同时,在美丽的面纱之后,赫斯顿通过人物形象塑造,试图解构白人主流话语中套式化了的负面黑人形象,无情地批判白人文化价值观的内化给黑人造成的创伤。赫斯顿小说中的黑人民俗文化一方面满足了白人读者群对黑人原始文化的好奇心,另一方面,通过对独特的黑人民俗文化的表征,赫斯顿旨在重构美国黑人文化身份,解构美国社会中的白人文化霸权,从而摧毁美国是个“大熔炉”的神话,表达非洲裔黑人对自己的美国民族身份的认同。黑人文化身份的重构对美国黑人的生存和发展具有重要的现实意义。黑人文化身份是美国黑人建构个人身份的基础,是他们民族自豪感的源泉,是他们争取种族平等的基石。通过对黑人文化身份的重构,杜?波依斯所说的美国黑人身份的二重性合而为一,美国黑人破碎的自我从分裂走向统一:他们既是黑人,又是美国人。他们不想把美国“非洲化”,也不想“漂白自己的灵魂”而为美国白人文化所同化,丧失自己的非洲文化之根基。通过对独树一帜的美国黑人文化的弘扬,赫斯顿为美国黑人唱响了一曲赞歌,旨在增强他们的民族自信心,增强处处受排挤的美国黑人的归属感,从而为无助无望的美国黑人建构一个精神家园。同时,赫斯顿的民俗小说可以唤起白人主流社会对美国黑人文化价值的重新审视,引起他们在如何对待美国社会中不同族群之间存在的文化差异的思考,从而采取更为有效的手段处理种族问题,构建美国宪法所描绘的理想社会生活图景:“所有人生而平等,都被造物主赋予了一些神圣不可侵犯的权利,即生命、自由和追求幸福的权利。”论文共分为五章。第一章为引论。本章首先对赫斯顿的复兴进行简单介绍并对赫斯顿研究文献进行回顾。美国黑人女作家佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿的一生颇具传奇色彩。在上个世纪二十年代哈莱姆文艺复兴的鼎盛期,她曾璀璨一时。然而在其生命的最后岁月里,她的小说几近绝版,她穷困潦倒以致于不得不做女佣来维持生计。可是在她离开人世十几年之后,艾丽斯·沃克偶然“重新发现”了她,自此美国兴起了一股赫斯顿研究的热潮,至今方兴未艾,而且硕果累累。这位已进入美国文学“名人堂”的作家直到最近才开始受到国内学者的关注,但是研究焦点多集中在其代表作《他们眼望上苍》的女性意识上,忽略了其小说中显著的黑人民俗文化表征。然后,本章对赫斯顿的民俗小说进行介绍,并列举了对其民俗小说的有代表性的负面评价。赫斯顿得以出版的四部长篇小说中有三部运用了丰富的黑人民俗文化素材,笔者把他们称为“民俗小说。”这三部作品按时间顺序排列如下:《约拿的葫芦蔓》(1934);《他们眼望上苍》(又译《他们的眼睛望着上帝》)《1937》;《摩西,山之人》(1939)。赫斯顿的民俗小说自出版之初就因缺乏显性的种族政治信息而遭到以赖特为首的抗议派作家的非议。其实,缺乏显性的政治信息并不意味着赫斯顿对种族问题漠不关心。在第三小节中,笔者指出文学文本不是独立自足的审美客体,超文本语境在正确理解赫斯顿的民俗小说中起着尤为重要的作用。只有把赫斯顿的民俗小说置于其生成的历史文化语境中去考察,才能透视出其中隐含的反种族主义内容。第二章主要阐明黑人民俗文化表征是赫斯顿小说的显著特点。本章首先从传记批评的角度指出民俗文化走进赫斯顿小说创作的合理性;然后对民俗文化的概念进行界定并对其进行分类;然后按照界定的概念和分类标准,对赫斯顿小说中丰富的黑人民俗文化现象进行梳理和例证。赫斯顿小说中的民俗文化现象归纳起来,有以下四类:文学型民俗,包括民间故事,神话和传说;语言型民俗,包括布道辞,谚语和习语;宗教型民俗,包括伏都教仪式和一些“迷信”习俗;动作型民俗,包括民歌和舞蹈。第三章论述作为赫斯顿小说生存策略的民俗文化。首先对哈莱姆文艺复兴时期的黑人文化时尚进行介绍;然后阐述黑人作家所面临的“双重读者群”的困境和赫斯顿的应对策略;最后通过文本细读分析赫斯顿小说对白人价值观的批判以及对白人主流话语中黑人负面套式人物形象的解构。生活于种族歧视仍很猖獗的二十世纪初,赫斯顿作为一位黑人作家为了使自己的作品得以出版,不得不牺牲部分创作自由,用白人读者感兴趣的“原始”文化作为美丽的面具而同时通过人物塑造来表达自己对白人种族主义的抗议。笔者认为考虑到当时的历史语境,认识到直接斗争的巨大代价的赫斯顿采取间接的方式来表达对白人种族主义的抗议是合理明智的。第四章阐述作为重构黑人文化身份媒介的民俗文化。本章首先梳理了美国文化,美国黑人文化和美国黑人民俗文化的复杂关系;然后分析种族主义与黑人文化身份的密切关系以及重构黑人文化身份的历史文化语境:二十年代的美国黑人身份危机和文化相对主义的盛行;最后论述赫斯顿的小说从四个方面在差异中重构美国黑人文化身份:黑人方言土语,宗教信仰,口头传统和音乐舞蹈。美国文化并不是一个统一同质的实体。美国,作为一个移民国家,其文化的一个鲜明特点就是异质性。美国黑人文化是美国文化马赛克之墙中鲜艳夺目的一块,是美国黑人对美国文化所做出的重要贡献,是他们建构自己美国民族身份的基石。赫斯顿通过对独特的黑人民俗文化的表征,意欲唤起人们对其价值的重新认识,提高黑人族群的自信心,从而更好地融入美国社会。第五章为结语。笔者在此对全文进行总结,指出对赫斯顿小说缺乏政治内容的指责是一种误读,只有把赫斯顿小说  

【英文摘要】 This dissertation offers a tentative analysis of the folkloric representations in Zora Neale Hurston’s three novels in terms of their historical and cultural contexts from the theoretical perspectives of cultural anthropology, folkloristics, deconstruction and identity formation.The generic term“culture”is often dichotomized into high culture and low culture, elite culture and mass culture, modern culture and traditional culture. Folklore belongs to the latter of the aforementioned binary oppositions, namely, it is traditional culture popular among the lower classes. Because of its association with the grassroots, folklore is usually condemned by the elite intellectuals as“vulgar, barbaric”and therefore, offensive to the cultured upper classes. Thriving in the cultural ecological system in the world, it, however, becomes a picturesque landscape for its vitality and beauty. African folklore, for instance, has been largely ignored for the limitations of its orality and later denigrated for the rise of slave trade. Since its genesis, African American folklore has been relegated to a periphery for the inferior status of its bearers in the American society, but it grows luxuriantly, rather than withering, in spite of strict constrictions.When the slave trade was waning, the European explorers and missionaries had acquired more knowledge about the African folk culture, which made it possible to examine it from the new perspective of cultural anthropology. However, the serious study of African American folklore began much later. Since the end of the 19th century, African American folklore began to attract attention as it deserves as a result of the prevalence of cultural relativism, which indicated the latest theoretical orientation in the field of cultural anthropology at that time. In the past, African American culture was placed in a disadvantaged position because of the marginal status of its bearers in the political and economical life in the racist American society. It was also much distorted because of the white racists’prejudices and meanwhile, the Negroes often resorted to“a featherbed of resistance”to the inquisitive white anthropologists, so the authentic African American folklore, for a long time, remained a mystery to the outsiders. At the turn of the twentieth century, the rise of Boasian anthropology made it a fashion to study African American folklore. In the mid-twenties, black folklore became a vogue with the promotion of black intellectuals. Within this cultural context, the Harlem Renaissance came into being and flourished.Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), an African American woman writer, built her literary reputation during the New Negro Movement. As a native Southerner, Hurston had been steeped in black folk traditions since childhood and therefore, developed a passion for them because of her intimate contact with them. What’s more, she studied anthropology under the supervision of Franz Boas, father of American anthropology and had undergone two folklore-collecting expeditions in the South. These experiences helped shape Hurston’s strong consciousness of black folklore and enhance her sense of responsibility to preserve and perpetuate the authentic African American folk heritages. Biographically speaking, it is quite natural for Hurston to apply black folklore to her fictional creation.Being a productive writer whose literary career lasted for nearly thirty years, Hurston is the author of four novels– Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) and Seraph on the Suwanee (1948)– and over fifty literary pieces of other genres such as short story, play and essay. Meanwhile she is also an established folklorist who authored two anthropological works written in literary style: Mules and Men (1935) and Tell My Horse (1938). As she transplanted literary narrative strategies into her anthropological works, Hurston also incorporated folkloric elements into her literary writing and created her unique folklore fiction. Due to time limit, this dissertation takes Hurston’s three representative novels as the object of its study and makes a tentative analysis of the historical and social functions of the folkloric elements in them. Among Hurston’s four published novels, three are imbued with African American folkloric representations, which is sufficient proof of the importance of black folklore in her fictional creation. However, the Hurston scholarship so far has focused on the feminine consciousness in her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God and ignored the prominent feature of the folkloric representations in her fiction. The author of this dissertation believes that it might be rewarding to make an interpretation of Hurston’s fiction within its historical context from the cultural perspective. Hopefully this new approach to Hurston’s fiction will lead to new findings, which in turn will cast light on a fuller and better understanding of this unique woman writer.Hurston’s fiction had not been well received for a long period of time after its publication. African American writers of“social protest”like Richard Wright and middle-class intellectuals like Alain Locke accused Hurston of“pandering to the white taste,”and having not“come to grips with social document fiction”and so on. These critics made their evaluation of Hurston’s fiction according to their own aesthetics and each of them had their reasons. Nevertheless, the author argues that it seems fairer to explore Hurston’s fiction within the particular historical and cultural contexts in which it was written. In the early twentieth century, racist ideology was still deeply rooted in the American society. As a college graduate who had personal experiences of racial prejudice and discrimination, Hurston would certainly not keep her eyes shut about the racial injustice, nor would she, as a Southerner, remain indifferent to the race question, a common case of Robert Penn Warren’s comment,“You can’t be a Southerner and not have the whole race question on your mind in one way or another.”Confronted with racial prejudice and discrimination, the methods of resistance vary from individual to individual: some may protest directly, and others may challenge white supremacy indirectly. Wright belongs to the former while Hurston, the latter. Hurston showed her concern toward the racial question by means of representing black folkloric heritages in her fiction. Thus, the rich folkloric representations in Hurston’s novels function in two ways: as a survival strategy and as a means of reconstructing black cultural identity.As James Weldon Johnson, one of the Renaissance proponents put it, the African American writers then were faced with the dilemma of a divided audience: the white America and the black America. It was difficult for them to cater to the tastes of a double audience. They must choose either of them, for the two audiences had widely different reading expectations: black readers expected more racial treatment of the subject, such as the racial conflicts and protest against racial injustices while white readers were more interested in the rich and picturesque folk life of the Negroes. Living in a hostile white society, Hurston attempted to keep a balance between the two: she submerged her racial protest behind the veil of black folklore in her fiction so as to have an access to the white mainstream publishing houses. Camouflaged in intoxicating African American folklore, Hurston’s novels were more readily accepted by white publishers and thus had a chance to be read by a wider range of white critics and ordinary readers, which itself was a victory in the African American writers’struggle against racism. At the same time, beneath the fascinating mask Hurston deconstructed the negative stereotyped Negro images and made a scathing criticism of the traumatic effects of the internalization of white cultural values on African Americans.Hurston’s folklore fiction did not simply aim to satisfy the curiosity of the white readers towards the“primitive”culture of African Americans, but to reconstruct black cultural identity, to deconstruct the white cultural hegemony, to demystify the melting-pot myth and to articulate African Americans’desire to build their national identity as Americans. The reconstruction of black cultural identity has great significance in the life of African Americans. Black cultural identity is the basis upon which their individual identity may be adequately constructed, and the source of their pride and the bedrock upon which they may wage their struggle for racial equality. By means of reconstructing their cultural identity, African Americans can possibly reunify their fractured identity (double consciousness in Du Bois’term), both an African and an American. Neither do they desire to“Africanize America”nor do they want to“bleach their souls”and be assimilated into the white American culture and thus lose their African heritages. By celebrating the unique African American folk culture, Hurston sings a song for African Americans to enhance their pride and reinforce their sense of community. In this sense, Hurston has created a spiritual habitat for the hopeless and helpless African Americans in a hostile white world. Meanwhile, Hurston’s fiction might waken white America to reevaluate African American culture and ponder over the cultural differences between the races and ultimately take more effective measures to tackle with the racial question in the American society and endeavor to make America an ideal country as described in its constitution:“That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”The dissertation consists of five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction. First of all, this part gives a brief introduction to the resurrection of Zora Neale Hurston and a review of the previous critical responses to Hurston’s literary texts. The life of the African American woman writer Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is quite legendary. During the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance, she shone like the bright morning star, but in the final years of her life she had to work as a maid for subsistence, with her novels out of print. More than a decade after her death, she, however, was rediscovered by Alice Walker and began to attract an enormous amount of attention thereafter. Her folklore fiction has since become the focus of attention of the reading public and the critical circle alike, and as a result, the research on Hurston abroad has been vigorous and fruitful. In stark contrast, Hurston has been to a great extent neglected until recently in China. What is more, Chinese scholars focus their attention mainly on the feminist consciousness in her masterpiece Their Eyes Were Watching God while neglecting the prominent folkloric representations in her fiction. The next section introduces Hurston’s folklore novels and the representative negative critical responses to them. Out of her four published novels, three are replete with black folkloric representations, and hence the term“folklore fiction.”Arranged in chronological order, these three folklore novels are: Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939). Since their publication, Hurston’s folklore novels have been condemned by“social protest”writers such as Richard Wright as lacking overt political messages, but as a matter of fact, the absence of overt political messages does not mean that Hurston is indifferent to the racial question. The last section points out that literary texts are not self-contained autonomous aesthetic objects because context plays an important role in the appropriate understanding of Hurston’s novels. The anti-racism implicit in Hurston’s folklore novels can not be revealed unless they are placed within the historical and cultural contexts in which they were written.Chapter Two explores the prominence of folkloric representations in Hurston’s fiction. The first section points out the legitimacy of the entry of black folklore into Hurston’s fiction. The next discusses the definition and categorization of folklore. Subsequently the diverse folkloric representations in Hurston’s novels are combed and exemplified according to the definition and classification system stated above. The folkloric representation in Hurston’s novels fall into four categories: literary types, consisting of folktale, myth and legend; linguistic types, sermons, proverbs and idiomatic expressions; religious types, hoodoo practices and some“superstitious”beliefs; and action types, folk music and dance.Chapter Three discusses the historical function of black folklore as a survival strategy of Hurston’s fiction. The first section introduces briefly the vogue of black culture during the Harlem Renaissance. The next elaborates on the dilemma of African American writers and Hurston’s strategy to deal with a divided audience. The last section focuses on the criticism of white cultural values and the deconstruction of the negative stereotyped Negro images in Hurston’s folklore fiction by means of close reading. Living in a racist world at the turn of the twentieth century, Hurston compromised part of her writing freedom to gain access to the mainstream white publishing houses by arousing white readers’interest with her presentation of the“primitive”African American culture and meanwhile articulated her protest against white supremacy through characterization. Considering the cost of open defiance within the historical context of her time, we believe it was wise for Hurston to take a roundabout path as a survival strategy of her fiction.Chapter Four elaborates on folklore as a means of reconstructing black cultural identity in Hurston’s fiction. First of all, the complex relationship between American culture, African American culture and African American folklore is discussed. The next section is about the close association of racism and black cultural identity, and the historical context within which the black cultural identity was reconstructed: the identity crisis of African Americans in the 1920s and the prevalence of cultural relativism. The last section deals with the reconstruction of black cultural identity by means of representing the unique African American folk culture in Hurston’s fiction: the employment of black English vernacular, the celebration of black religion, the conservation of the oral tradition, and the promotion of African American songs and dances. America is not a unified homogeneous entity, but rather is inherently heterogeneous in terms of culture as a nation of immigrants. African American culture is a beautiful piece of the American mosaic, and a valuable contribution African Americans have made to the American culture. This subculture also provides the basis upon which the national identity of the black Americans can be adequately constructed. By means of representing the unique African American folk culture, Hurston attempted to impart upon Americans the value of it and thus boost the pride of its bearers for the well-being of them as American citizens.Chapter F

【中文关键词】 佐拉·尼尔·赫斯顿; 民俗小说; 生存策略; 黑人文化身份

【英文关键词】 Zora Neale Hurston; Folklore Fiction; Survival Strategy; Black Cultural Identity

【网络出版投稿人】上海外国语大学 【网络出版投稿时间】2009-03-10 【DOI】CNKI:CDMD:1.2009.025629 攻读期成果