美国文学自然主义 美国, 自然主义, 文学

sullen1115

The term naturalism describes a type of literature that attempts to apply scientific principles of objectivity and detachment to its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary technique, naturalism implies a philosophical position: for naturalistic writers, since human beings are, in Emile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characters can be studied through their relationships to their surroundings. Zola's 1880 description of this method in Le roman experimental (The Experimental Novel, 1880) follows Claude Bernard's medical model and the historian Hippolyte Taine's observation that "virtue and vice are products like vitriol and sugar"--that is, that human beings as "products" should be studied impartially, without moralizing about their natures. Other influences on American naturalists include Herbert Spencer and Joseph LeConte.
Through this objective study of human beings, naturalistic writers believed that the laws behind the forces that govern human lives might be studied and understood. Naturalistic writers thus used a version of the scientific method to write their novels; they studied human beings governed by their instincts and passions as well as the ways in which the characters' lives were governed by forces of heredity and environment. Although they used the techniques of accumulating detail pioneered by the realists, the naturalists thus had a specific object in mind when they chose the segment of reality that they wished to convey.
In George Becker's famous and much-annotated and contested phrase, naturalism's philosophical framework can be simply described as "pessimistic materialistic determinism." Another such concise definition appears in the introduction to American Realism: New Essays. In that piece,"The Country of the Blue," Eric Sundquist comments, "Revelling in the extraordinary, the excessive, and the grotesque in order to reveal the immutable bestiality of Man in Nature, naturalism dramatizes the loss of individuality at a physiological level by making a Calvinism without God its determining order and violent death its utopia" (13).
A modified definition appears in Donald Pizer's Realism and Naturalism in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction, Revised Edition (1984):
[T]he naturalistic novel usually contains two tensions or contradictions, and . . . the two in conjunction comprise both an interpretation of experience and a particular aesthetic recreation of experience. In other words, the two constitute the theme and form of the naturalistic novel. The first tension is that between the subject matter of the naturalistic novel and the concept of man which emerges from this subject matter. The naturalist populates his novel primarily from the lower middle class or the lower class. . . . His fictional world is that of the commonplace and unheroic in which life would seem to be chiefly the dull round of daily existence, as we ourselves usually conceive of our lives. But the naturalist discovers in this world those qualities of man usually associated with the heroic or adventurous, such as acts of violence and passion which involve sexual adventure or bodily strength and which culminate in desperate moments and violent death. A naturalistic novel is thus an extension of realism only in the sense that both modes often deal with the local and contemporary. The naturalist, however, discovers in this material the extraordinary and excessive in human nature.
The second tension involves the theme of the naturalistic novel. The naturalist often describes his characters as though they are conditioned and controlled by environment, heredity, instinct, or chance. But he also suggests a compensating humanistic value in his characters or their fates which affirms the significance of the individual and of his life. The tension here is that between the naturalist's desire to represent in fiction the new, discomfiting truths which he has found in the ideas and life of his late nineteenth-century world, and also his desire to find some meaning in experience which reasserts the validity of the human enterprise. (10-11)
For further definitions, see also The Cambridge Guide to American Realism and Naturalism, Charles Child Walcutt's American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream, June Howard's Form and History in American Literary Naturalism, Walter Benn Michaels's The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism, Lee Clark Mitchell's Determined Fictions, Mark Selzer's Bodies and Machines, and other works from the naturalism bibliography. See Lars Ahnebrink, Richard Lehan, and Louis J. Budd for information on the intellectual European and American backgrounds of naturalism.

Characteristics
Characters. Frequently but not invariably ill-educated or lower-class characters whose lives are governed by the forces of heredity, instinct, and passion. Their attempts at exercising free will or choice are hamstrung by forces beyond their control; social Darwinism and other theories help to explain their fates to the reader. See June Howard's Form and History for information on the spectator in naturalism.
Setting. Frequently an urban setting, as in Norris's McTeague. See Lee Clark Mitchell's Determined Fictions, Philip Fisher's Hard Facts, and James R. Giles's The Naturalistic Inner-City Novel in ffice:smarttags" />America.
Techniques and plots. Walcutt says that the naturalistic novel offers "clinical, panoramic, slice-of-life" drama that is often a "chronicle of despair" (21). The novel of degeneration--Zola's L'Assommoir and Norris's Vandover and the Brute, for example--is also a common type.

Themes
Walcutt identifies survival, determinism, violence, and taboo as key themes.
2. The "brute within" each individual, composed of strong and often warring emotions: passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance or pleasure; and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict in naturalistic novels is often "man against nature" or "man against himself" as characters struggle to retain a "veneer of civilization" despite external pressures that threaten to release the "brute within."
3. Nature as an indifferent force acting on the lives of human beings. The romantic vision of Wordsworth--that "nature never did betray the heart that loved her"--here becomes Stephen Crane's view in "The Open Boat": "This tower was a giant, standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual--nature in the wind, and nature in the vision of men. She did not seem cruel to him then, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was indifferent, flatly indifferent."
4. The forces of heredity and environment as they affect--and afflict--individual lives.
5. An indifferent, deterministic universe. Naturalistic texts often describe the futile attempts of human beings to exercise free will, often ironically presented, in this universe that reveals free will as an illusion.

" />ractitioners
Frank Norris
Theodore Dreiser
Jack London
Stephen Crane
Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth (1905)
Ellen Glasgow, Barren Ground (1925)
John Dos Passos (1896-1970), U.S.A. trilogy(1938): The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), andThe Big Money (1936)
James T. Farrell (1904-1979), Studs Lonigan (1934)
John Steinbeck (1902-1968), The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Richard Wright, Native Son (1940), Black Boy (1945)
Norman Mailer (1923- ), The Naked and the Dead (1948)
William Styron, Lie Down in Darkness (1951)
Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

Stephen Crane
on Nature
and the
Universe
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples.
--Stephen Crane, "The Open Boat"
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation." --Stephen Crane (1894, 1899

sullen1115

美国自然主义文学
美国自然主义文学思潮随着美国工业化进程以及后工业社会的形成而发生与传承，在美国文学史上占有重要地位。该研究以美国自然主义重要作家为研究对象，追溯美国工业化进程中社会价值观的变迁及其在20世纪的传承与塑型，揭示了现代美国社会核心价值观的深层次问题，探索了其工业化与后工业化进程中复杂的文化模式、社会心理及其个人行为方式的历史变迁。
一、美国自然主义文学的本土渊源与欧洲始源
美国农村题材文学是在工业化语境中逐渐展开的，经历了从浪漫情绪到现实情绪再到绝望情绪的历史变迁。以农业文明为基础所建构的美国民主理想和社会架构，在19世纪初中叶杰弗逊的“农业天然道德论”、泰勒的“田园共和主义”和爱默生的“自然超灵论”这些文化表征沉淀下成为美国大众最朴素的信仰和理想，也是当时社会价值观的典型代表。
随着美国工业化进程的不断深入，原先平静和谐的农业文明被打破，由开始那种“远方小山村”的回忆转化为后来对农村生活的无奈和悲叹；田园化和理想化的“农村镀金主义”价值观念逐渐被冷漠与恐惧的“自然邪恶论”所代替，并逐渐引发了后来自然主义文学的决定论和悲观主义情绪。特别是19世纪中叶以后，美国社会的精神危机凸现出来，横扫全国的改革运动就是面对这种危机在社会生产、种族歧视、性别差异、个人生活习惯以及贫困化和城市化等层面上进行解决的尝试。在这些轰轰烈烈的改革运动中，涌现出各种各样的“社会改革文学”，记录了人们面对工业化种种困惑所进行的艰难求索，而大多数改革的失败导致那些通过改革完善社会的认识论和价值观彻底破灭，并最终导致了19世纪末自然主义生存与暴力论的文学转型。
与社会改革文学一样，乡土文学和现实主义文学从美国的现实多样性以及文化多元性中来寻找美国工业社会价值的答案，试图从某种意识形态化的“民主进步现实”中获得建构美国新价值观念的理论基础。这些文学试图以传统农业文明的价值理想“整合”工业化所导致的“分裂性现实”，而这一整合的失败也迫使这些作家在后期创作中皈依自然主义，从而完全承认和认可自然主义作家所持有的社会价值观。另外，自然主义作为当时美国文化重塑过程中的一种文学思潮也受到外来文化的影响。从这个意义上讲，美国不但是欧洲文化的传承者，也是世界文化的继承者。
总之，自然主义文学在美国19世纪末的兴起不是偶然的，是各种社会文化因素相互作用的产物，是工业化进程中文化转型时期的特定意识形态表现，是习惯于农业文明价值体系的美国人面对新的工业文明所产生的困惑和思索，更是美国农民逐步在适应工业文明过程中心理震荡和行为失范的正常表现。
二、自然主义文学重要作家的文学观念和审美转型
本成果通过分析诺里斯、克莱恩、德莱塞以及伦敦文学创作中“现实”和“真实”的意识形态内涵，解读了他们面对文学商业化的创作思考，梳理了当时社会文化转型与走向新世纪的美国精神建设之间的复杂关系。南北战争之后，美国农业文明语境下的大众理想和偶像受到普遍怀疑，那种坚定的宗教信仰与怀旧的国民心态随着工业化进程逐渐走向死亡。然而，旧的理想与偶像的消失需要新的理想和偶像的补充和替代。新的工业资本家取代了上帝或精神寄托者的位置，成为美国新文化中大众理想与偶像的代表。从社会层面上讲，传统小说中的和谐社会转化为残酷竞争社会，传统小说中的“父亲”与“家庭”则转化为竞争社会中的“老板”与“工厂”。资本主义经济生产所形成的社会分工代替了原来农业文明中的社会等级制度。这种等级制度不再是依据明显的家族或政治遗传权力形成的等级制度，而是一种按照经济生产和劳动分配形成的等级制度。它最大的特征就是原来依靠国家机器维持的统治体制逐渐转变成依靠经济机器维持的社会统治。随着经济垄断程度的不断提高，人们越来越感觉到统治自己的东西变成一种“无形的铁手”，人们在生存的斗争中会觉得有一种难以理解的力量总是在控制着他们，但又不知道这种力量到底是什么。自然主义所叙述的就是社会主体在生存中抗争、在注定的失败中堕落以及在悲剧性的结局中灭亡的故事。但是，这种悲剧化的叙述并不是自然主义作家故意追求艺术效果的产物，而是对当时美国现实的一种心理反映，暗含了作家意识形态和对社会的价值观念判断的转变。
三、自然主义文学作家认识现实和再现现实的物质基础
自然主义文学作家注重在社会生产、流通、消费过程中表现主体对自然和社会的生理和心理反映，标志着社会文化意识从理想化到工具化的价值观转变。首先，通过解读诺里斯“小麦史诗”的第一部《章鱼》，挖掘自然环境和社会文化环境对主体生活方式和社会行为的制约，揭示了商业化意识向乡村小镇的渗透以及主体生存的社会悲剧。其次，通过阅读德莱塞的《嘉莉妹妹》，分析工业化进程中社会大众对城市空间的基本透视模式。城市是美国工业化文化的典型代表，是自然主义文学关注的现实焦点。作家把爱默生的“超灵”观念应用于对大都市的描述，试图在城市生活中寻求宇宙的法则和超灵的存在，但并没有发现超验主义所说的充满向善性的超灵，却遭遇到一个冷漠的城市灵魂。因此，德莱塞的作品可以被理解为一部关于城市生活的浪漫传奇，展示了资本主义“生产欲望和消费欲望”的社会文化转变。再次，通过阅读克莱恩《红色英勇勋章》中的情景投射与意义贯通的文化分析，叙述了战争作为工业化社会现实的隐喻模式，演示了工业化意识形态对社会主体遏制和诱骗的文化生产过程，论证了战争或类似战争的社会对主体心理及其行为暴力化和野性化的塑造功能。最后，通过阅读伦敦的《野性的呼唤》，探索工业化文化的内涵。该作品虽然不是描述工业社会发生的具体事件，但伦敦却以动物寓言形式普遍化地描述了美国淘金者为了金钱梦想而进行的商业探险。这种商业探险实际上是资本主义工业化进程的一个组成部分，因此《野性的呼唤》与其说是对巴克作为狗的生存环境的描写，倒不如说这是伦敦对工业化进程中人类生存环境的隐喻性反映。
四、自然主义文学与美国工业化进程中的社会心理、大众意识和个体行为
作为社会成员行为和动机的内驱力，大众深层意识的转变是社会价值观变迁的主要内容。自然主义文学作家聚焦人类的深层意识和欲望冲动以及未曾探测的阴暗角落，研究了资本主义社会文化怎样使人变成精神病人的主体性生产过程。
首先，通过分析诺里斯的《麦克提格》，探索这个历史时期的主体心理结构，考察了工业化和商业化语境下主体外貌的野性特征与欲望冲动的必然联系，揭示了资本主义商业心理中“性欲”和“物欲”一体化的心理过程以及以“自残”与“快感”为典型特征的心理幻想和主体行为。诺里斯使用“镀金鸟笼”来表征美国商业文化中的主体心理模式是非常准确的，即金钱作为一种控制工具成为人的微型心理监狱，人们的所有欲望、情感、行为总是封锁在这种物质化的囚牢之中，难以跳出物质与快感的意识形态控制，即使主体受虐也成为一种心理快感形式。
其次，通过阅读德莱塞的自传体小说《“天才”》，探讨美国19-20世纪之交作家的自我心理塑型过程。该成果集中分析了德莱塞艺术审美的裂变与美国工业化社会转型时期作家自我形象塑造的关系，挖掘了当时资本主义生产方式与作品表征模式的内在联系，揭示了作品所蕴涵的大众意识从生产主义到具有消费主义性质的意识形态变迁以及从欲望机器到乌托邦的社会心理裂变。
再次，通过对克莱恩《街头女郎梅季》、《蓝色旅馆》和《海上扁舟》的阅读，阐释社会转型时期主体心理理性判断标准丧失的动因，揭示了社会现实的不稳定性与主体心理浮躁之间的必然联系，分析了印象化的社会主体心理所导致的社会认知偏差和行为越轨以及社会态度转向悲伤的根本原因。
最后，通过解读伦敦的《马丁·伊登》，挖掘资本主义文化霸权与暴力及其所导致的亚文化群体心理格式。该研究聚焦对当时知识合法化的解构，再现了以“知识”为中心的文学、艺术、科学、习性、礼仪以及日常生活等文化表征对社会主体心理的塑造及遏制方式和过程。
五、自然主义文学的社会价值观在20世纪的继承与发展
自然主义创作在美国20世纪文学历史不同时期的出现表明，它作为一种重要的文学运动生存下来，并在20世纪美国文学中形成一个创作传统，反映了现代美国生活各个历史阶段的主题。作为在文化体系中最高层次的大众意识核心，它所蕴涵的社会价值观也并非美国19-20世纪之交的偶然社会文化现象，而且随着自然主义文学的传承贯穿于整个20世纪的美国大众意识之中。该成果分别以现代派作家多斯·帕索斯、黑色幽默作家冯尼古特、后现代作家德里罗论述了美国自然主义文学所继续与传承的这种“泛历史价值”。
通过上述分析，该成果研究认为：（1）美国自然主义作家是在对美国现实生活的文学阐释中发现了达尔文主义的正确性，并在农村文学、社会改革文学、乡土文学和现实主义等本土文学中找到了自己的“叙述始源”。（2）自然主义作家重塑文学观念、聚焦新的“真实”以及对于美国的重新阐释标志着美国社会价值观从理想化和人文化到物质化和工具化的变迁。（3）自然主义比以前的美国传统文学更具体地揭示了美国资本主义生产的社会心理本质，即生产过程作为“生产欲望和消费欲望”的社会化过程。（4）作家所再现的主体“动物本性”实际上是资本主义工业化进程中最根本的“人性”。（5）自然主义文学创作在美国工业化结束之际作为美国民族精神建设的一部分，成为19世纪末重要的文化和价值观念。（6）自然主义文学观念在20世纪美国文学中形成了自身的文学传统，所标记的美国社会价值观变迁成为20世纪美国价值观系统的重要组成部分。

nickoil

比较喜欢杰克伦敦的
那家伙的血管里都在冒火