罗伯特•库弗小说中的后现代主义游戏观

Abstract

在美国当代文坛上，罗伯特•库弗早已树立作为一位最具创造性和最引入注目的后现代作家的声誉。通过在小说中采取各种实验方法来处理虚构形式， 展现人类借助游戏创造秩序与模式，库弗表现出用游戏技法暴露小说叙事策略的强烈热情。库弗小说中普遍存在的游戏意象，揭示了他的美学理论与游戏理论家约翰•赫伊津哈、罗杰•凯洛依斯和雅克•厄尔曼以及许多其他游戏理论家所提议的理论宗旨之间的一致性。自从库弗的第一部小说问世以来，文学的游戏性早已被公认为是其作品的标志性特征。在长达四十多年的创作生涯中，库弗获得的称号不计其数，但“先锋派的游戏大师”或“杂耍高手”也许是对他最贴切的描述。作为富于创新精神的后现代派作家，库弗的文本中令人目眩的文学叙事策略和精湛的技艺足以证明这一点。 本论文旨在结合游戏理论和后现代派理论家关于文学传统中游戏叙事的论述，展开研究库弗的文本。本论文逐本溯源，首先探讨游戏与文化，游戏与后现代派文学之间固有的密切关系，接着探讨库弗的文艺美学，创作主题和小说技巧如何契合游戏理论家的论述。库弗认为，历史、宗教、制度体系、神话等都只是人为构建，人们往往理所当然接受这些构建，并出于方便和习惯紧紧依附着这些虚构体系。通过对宗教、历史和神话的戏仿，库弗告诫人们固守这些虚构体系的潜在危险。对世界的虚构性和复杂性的坚信不疑，也激励库弗采用游戏的态度去革新叙事，以使传统的叙事重新焕发光彩，给传统叙事注入生机和活力。此外，本论文从总体上探讨库弗如何运用他的游戏性技法和后现代派文学技巧游戏文学传统，挫败读者期待。同时，本论文探讨传统叙事框架如何在库弗的游戏性文本中被瓦解之后得以重建。本论文着重研究库弗四本小说，即《公众的怒火》、《布鲁诺分子的来历》、《宇宙棒球联盟，台柱，J•亨利•沃》和《杰拉德家的派对》，如何从不同侧面展示库弗对叙事传统的创新性游戏，以及探讨库弗如何以貌似玩笑的方式戏仿宗教、历史与神话，藉此提供一种新的思维方式。 游戏理论家们一致公认游戏和文化密切相关。游戏理论家关于游戏在人类生活中，包括美学、语言、文学或人类生活的任何其他层面的普遍性和必要性的认识，不仅得到后现代派理论家肯定和赞同，而且后现代派理论家还进一步把游戏和文学之间的联系拓展成后现代派文学的基本组成部分。这些后现代派理论家，不仅定义游戏和游戏性小说，为解读游戏性文本提供术语和原则，指出文学评论家和作家常常运用游戏概念，并且强调游戏概念在研究文学的运作和在游戏在后现代派文学的普遍性中发挥重要作用。因此，后现代派文学典型的自由、不确定性、碎片、狂欢，杂糅和反封闭的特点使得游戏理论成为研究后现代派文本的有利工具。同样，正是库弗对语言和结构的关注和他嬉戏式戏仿文学传统的做法，使得游戏理论得以应用到对他的文本的研究中。 《公众的怒火》是树立库弗在当代小说领域艺术家声誉的一部鸿篇巨著。库弗通过并置虚构与历史事实，融合各种结构形式，以独特和嬉戏的方式重现美国社会在二十世纪五十年代冷战时期的狂热和偏执。库弗采用一个看似嬉戏和荒谬的立场重新阐述历史，质疑关于人类生存状况和影响世界的各种力量，更重要的是质疑美国片面的思想意识形态。库弗对美国历史、政治、立法和冷战心态的辛辣讽刺和戏仿，主要通过小丑似的叙述者理查德•尼克松得以实现。库弗把小说的结构塑造成戏剧的初衷，戏剧对丑角的需要以及现实生活中的理查德•尼克松和小丑形象的巧妙吻合，使尼克松成为小说中游戏者的不二人选。库弗笔下的尼克松是对当时的美国副总统和幻想家的戏仿，完全秉承库弗小说中其他主角的游戏精神。然而，较之亨利的桌面棒球，尼克松的游戏政治特性突出，范围更广。库弗笔下的尼克松痴迷于他的权力游戏，像库弗的其他人物一样耽于幻想。游戏同样是驱使尼克松去奋争，去从混乱无序的世界寻找意义的动力。通过刻画尼克松对数字命理学和命名游戏、对收集随机命理细节和荒谬联想的迷恋，库弗得以保持人物塑造方面的持续性。当库弗嬉戏着尼克松，尼克松玩着数字和命名游戏时，尼克松成为游戏的主体和客体，既是游戏者也是被游戏者。尼克松的游戏世界具备游戏的所有基本要素：欢乐、创造性、自由，张力和孤立。通过叙述尼克松的数字和命名游戏，库弗表明尼克松的游戏和小说创作之间的相似性，但两者的主要区别在于各自使用媒介的不同，尼克松使用数字和名字及命名来构建游戏，而艺术家使用语言来完成虚构。库弗的游戏手法还体现在他对“山姆大叔”的拟人化塑造。“山姆大叔”讽刺性地代表着美国的政治和历史，同时也是库弗戏仿式夸张的缩影。库弗通过语言游戏淋漓尽致地讽刺美国天真的优越感。融合了历届美国总统演讲、历代英雄人物、普通百姓语言和宗教教义等特色的山姆大叔的演讲，成为库弗语言游戏的缩影。除此之外，库弗夸张地重现罗森堡夫妇死刑执行狂欢场面，借此揭露美国政治的欺骗性和虚伪。读者对传统历史小说的期望完全被颠覆和挫败。当美国民众为庆祝泄露原子弹机密的叛徒被处以电刑而狂欢，把时代广场转化成一个凯洛伊斯笔下的中世纪节日市场时，“眩晕感”产生了。通过把一个严肃的政治事件置于一个狂欢热闹的场面，库弗以嬉戏的态度重写历史，藉此制造出崭新但令人不安的意义，挑战读者再度审视约定俗成的旧观念、既定的价值体系以及所有人类构建。 库弗在《布鲁诺分子的来历》一书中的游戏，是对基督教的戏仿和现实主义叙事的元小说游戏。在该部小说中，库弗通过引用大量宗教暗示进行戏仿。除了许多人名、地名与基督教息息相关之外，库弗还以布鲁诺教派的扩大来影射基督教的起源和发展。由于游戏在库弗的小说创作中始终是一个鲜明的主题性概念，库弗通过描写主要人物利用复杂的巧合规律与数字命理的重复，来制造一个人为任意构建的现实世界。布鲁诺分子教派投机式的数字命理猜测和联想，为这一教派的发展与情节的展开提供了原动力。库弗对布鲁诺分子试图通过数字和命理学来阐释种种神秘的巧合并构建规律的做法进行调侃。库弗旨在指出，布鲁诺分子的数字命理联想是误导和限制人们的种种陈规陋习和教条之一。元小说通常被认为是构建自我意识游戏叙事的完美模式。而库弗对现实主义小说的态度，则是一场具有明显元小说性质的游戏。通过叙述布鲁诺分子这一教派的起源、形成与全球性声誉的确立，库弗把《布鲁诺分子的来历》一书变成对宗教与历史虚构性的元小说评论，并指出目的需求与意义建构不是宗教狂热分子独有的追求，而是人类共享的集体需求。《布鲁诺分子的来历》这部小说从表面上看似遵循现实主义传统，逐渐营造紧张气氛，利用实际场景、对话和角色展开情节，并在小说结尾达到高潮。通过融合线性叙事与人物的种种离奇幻想，变化叙事风格，打乱线性时间，制造角色与其语言的不协调性，并且暴露小说技巧，库弗开始逐步推翻读者的期待，制造“晕眩”感。总而言之，库弗在这部小说中所玩的游戏，旨在首先制造一个现实主义与传统小说的幻觉，然后在读者已经完全习惯于传统的叙事风格时，再伺机打破传统叙事框架的束缚。此外，布鲁诺分子在救赎山顶等候最终审判的狂欢场面，也凸显了库弗对传统的嬉戏态度，并提醒人们“狂欢”社会是由“面具与占有，即‘模仿’与‘晕眩’统治的”（凯洛伊斯88）。在这部小说中，库弗的嬉戏感一如既往成为敦促读者重新审视文化规范和既定思维模式的一个深思熟虑的策略。 库弗的第二本著作《宇宙棒球联盟，台柱J•亨利•沃》在结构上与其第一本小说一脉相承，充满嬉戏性。在这部围绕桌面棒球比赛的作品中，库弗把游戏冲动等同于虚构欲望。与《布鲁诺分子的来历》中那位自我意识强烈的游戏者贾斯汀•米勒不同，《宇宙棒球联盟，台柱J•亨利•沃》一书的主人翁是一位更为虔诚的“游戏者”，其游戏涵盖罗杰•凯洛伊斯定义的四个类型：“竞争”、“机遇”、“模仿”及“眩晕”。与大多数描写关运动或游戏的小说不同，库弗的作品颇具嬉戏性，描绘的是一个游戏者，并且涉及棒球比赛的特定模式与规则，利用游戏结构来拓展情节、人物与行为。在《宇宙棒球联盟，台柱J•亨利•沃》一书中，库弗对人物的游戏一如既往继承了他在另外几部小说中的主题和对基本问题的关注。库弗这位游戏大师是与亨利、语言及神话在游戏。在《宇宙棒球联盟，台柱J•亨利•沃》一书中，库弗通过纷繁复杂的数字巧合规律与亨利对棒球运动员慎重的取名从而构建了一个棒球联赛的描述，展示了小说的嬉戏性。亨利操纵游戏规则，破坏了游戏；亨利完全契合凯洛伊斯对游戏者无法区分事实与幻想，游戏者与自己所虚构的角色产生认同感的这一番阐述。通过塑造亨利的游戏世界，库弗摒弃了小说必须真实反映现实世界，也摈弃历史事实稳固不变、客观公允这一观念，转而倡导接受不确定性与偶然性，并提出了多种阐释的可能性。 《杰拉德家的派对》是本文研究的第四本书。通过融合体裁、话语与声音，库弗与小说符码展开游戏，援引侦探小说要素，促成读者对侦探小说的期望，接着却又推翻这种期望。库弗热衷于对传统中根深蒂固的关键因素，如社会等级与侦探逻辑，进行解构和破坏；这一倾向在本书尤为明显。依照凯洛伊斯的说法，库弗是带着强烈的“眩晕”冲动在玩游戏，这一冲动通过对晚会上嘈杂的声音与不合逻辑的推论进行描述而体现。客人们推杯换盏，纵情声色，高谈阔论，嬉笑打闹，眩晕的欲望得到了满足；对晕眩感的追求一直持续到曲终人散。通过使用“障眼法”，大量传播误导性线索，塑造一名武断固执的游戏者—侦探帕迪尤，以及引入一个反高潮结局，库弗构造了自己与读者之间的游戏。在库弗与读者的游戏中，侦探小说中“惊诧度与可信度” （埃姆斯89）之间的平衡遭致戏仿，从而产生了幽默感、非逻辑性与不可信度。除了其嬉戏性之外，《杰拉德家的派对》还展示了库弗的派对小说与后现代派文学之间的密切关系。小说中的几十名客人都缺乏外表描写，无名无姓，个性模糊；他们的声音和高谈阔论互相交杂在一起。相互交织的声音，身体冲突，以及接踵而来的一桩桩离奇谋杀令读者阅后一头雾水，期望再次被挫败。 经过多年的努力，库弗建立起文坛老匠的地位。他颠覆了传统的叙事手段，融合讽刺与滑稽、运用文字游戏对历史、政治、神话宗教及美国社会做出客观评论，为美国文学的重塑做出了重大贡献。不过，他的文本闪烁其词意义艰涩，措辞粗犷，细节描述过于冗长，这些都是他写作中的瑕疵。尽管如此，库弗对当代美国文学已作出并将继续作出重要的贡献。

Robert Coover has secured his reputation as one of the most creative and impressive postmodernist writers on the contemporary American literary scene. Establishing in his fiction an experimental approach to fictional forms and a preoccupation with the ways human beings create order and patterns through game-playing, Coover exhibits a strong passion for flaunting artifice in a playful manner. The play and game images prevalent in Coover’s fiction demonstrate the congruity between his aesthetics and the principal tenet of play theories proposed by theorists Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Jacques Ehrmann and many others. Literary playfulness has long been recognized as the signature feature of Robert Coover’s works ever since the publication of his first novel. Among the various labels that Coover has acquired in his four-decade long writing career, an avant-garde game-master or vaudevillian might be the most apt description, evidenced in Coover’s text by his dazzling array of literary acrobatics and technical virtuosity as an innovative postmodernist. This dissertation aims at integrating play theories with postmodernist theorizations concerning playful narrative in literary conventions. Beginning with a survey of the inherent affinity between play and culture, playfulness and literary postmodernism, the dissertation examines how Coover’s literary aesthetics, thematic concerns and fiction-making artistic devices fit in with the theoretical contentions of play theorists. Coover contends that history, religion, institutions, myth, and theology are mere constructs of fictions and that people have the propensity to take for granted and hold onto these fictional constructs out of convenience. In his parody of religion, history and myth, Coover warns people of the potential danger of being bound to those fiction systems. Coover’s staunch faith in the fictionality and complexity of the world inspires him to playfully tear down structures so as to recreate and rebuild them. The dissertation explores in general the way that Coover employs his playful artistic strategies and postmodernist techniques to juggle with literary traditions and to frustrate conventional expectations. His four novels, namely The Public Burning, The Origin of the Brunists, The Universal Baseball Association Inc. J. Henry Waugh, Prop. and Gerald’s Party, are selected to show the different aspects of Coover’s game-playing with narrative conventions and how religion, history and myth are parodied in a ludic manner to provide a new way of thinking. Play theorists have unanimously acknowledged the interwoven relationship between play and culture. Their recognition of the ubiquity and essentiality of play in human life, including aesthetics, language, literature or any other aspects of reality, is affirmed and echoed by postmodernist theorists, who have further expanded the connection between play and literature into a fundamental part of literary postmodernism. These theorists of postmodernism not only define play and playful fiction, provide terms and principles to analyze ludic fiction, and point out the frequent appropriation of the concepts of play and game by literary critics and writers, but also stress the significance of the concept of play in studying the workings of literature and the pervasiveness of play in postmodernist literature. The freedom, indeterminacy, fragmentation, carnivalization, hybridization and anti-closure that characterize postmodernist literature thus render play theory a useful tool for the examination of postmodernist writing. Likewise, it’s Coover’s concern for language and structure and his ludic parody of literary conventions that make it possible for the play theory to be applied to the study of his texts. The Public Burning has established Coover’s fame as an artist in the field of contemporary fiction. Coover juxtaposes historical facts with fiction, blends various structural forms, and recreates the frenetic paranoia of the American community in a unique and playful manner. Adopting a seemingly playful and ludicrous stance to reinterpret history, Coover raises questions about human conditions, about the influences that shape the world, and more importantly questions the one-dimensional American ideology. His sarcastic parody of American history, politics, legislation and Cold War mentality is primarily achieved through the characterization of the clownish game-player, Richard Nixon. The original idea of structuring the novel as a play, the need for a buffoon and the parallels between the clown image and Richard Nixon in real life render Nixon a perfect player in the novel. Nixon, the parodied figure of the then Vice-President and fantasist, inherits the game-spirit from other protagonists in Coover’s fiction. His game is political in nature and much broader in scope than Henry’s table-top baseball game. Coover’s Nixon is as obsessed with his games and indulged in his fantasies as Coover’s other characters. Games are the same impetus to keep Nixon going and make sense out of the chaos in the world. Coover maintains continuity in his characterization through Nixon’s infatuation with numerology and naming, collecting random numerological details and providing preposterous associations. When Coover plays with Nixon who plays with numbers and naming, Nixon becomes the subject and object of the play, the player and the played. The play-world of Nixon partakes of all the essential elements of play: joy, creativity, freedom, tension and isolation. Through the narration of Nixon’s game with numbers and naming, Coover suggests the parallel between Nixon’s game and the novelistic world, but the major difference between them lies in the medium they are employing, with Nixon using numerology and naming and artists using language. Coover’s game-playing is also evidenced in his personification of Uncle Sam—a caricatured representative of American politics and history and the epitome of Coover’s paradoic exaggeration. The satire of naïve American superiority is conveyed through Coover’s play with language, epitomized by Uncle Sam’s speech, a mixture of those of the past American presidents, heroes and ordinary folks and religious doctrines. In addition, Coover recreates a carnivalesque scene on the execution of the Rosenbergs to disclose the chicanery of American politics. The reader’s expectation for conventional historical fiction is totally baffled and a sense of vertigo is created when the American public is celebrating an orgiastic gathering and transforming the Times Square into a festive medieval marketplace. Grounding the event in a carnivalesque orgy, along with his playful treatment of history and language, Coover’s novel produces a new and disconcerting meaning, challenging the reader to reexamine established notions, value systems and all human constructs. Coover’s game in The Origin of the Brunists is a playful parody of Christianity and a metafictional game with realistic narrative. The parody is achieved through many intentional religious allusions in the novel. Not only are the names of characters and places readily associated with Christianity, but the expansion of the religious cult alludes to the origins of Christianity. Since games always feature conspicuously as a thematic motif in his fiction, Coover constructs an arbitrary reality through elaborate patterns of coincidences and recurrences of numerology. It is the numerological speculations of the religious cult—the Brunists—that provide incentive for the development of the religious cult and the unfolding of the plot as well. Poking fun at the Brunists’ mathematical methods to make sense of occult coincidences and to create a pattern, Coover suggests that the Brunists’ numerological associations are one of the dogmas that mislead and restrict people. Coover’s play with realistic narrative is a metafictional game, a perfect mode to construct self-conscious game narrative. By using the metaphor of the formation, establishment and universal fame of the religious cult, Coover makes the book a metafictional commentary on the fictiveness of religion and history, suggesting that the need for purpose and meaning-construction is not an individual quest exclusive to the religious fanatics but a collective need. Superficially following a realistic convention, the novel builds up tensions, unfolds the plot with actual scenes, dialogues and characters, and reaches a climax at the end of the novel. Coover begins to destroy the stability of perceptions of the reader and creates a sense of ilinx by blending narrative linearity with fantasy, changing narrative style, disrupting linear time and producing incongruities between characters and their language. In a nutshell, the game that Coover plays here is to create an illusion of realism and traditions and then to break away from the constraints of narrative convention when the reader is comfortably accustomed to conventional narrative style. In addition, the carnival scene on the Mount of Redemption where the Brunists await the Final Judgment reveals Coover’s playful attitude towards traditions and reminds people of the “Dionysian” societies which are “ruled by masks and possession, i.e. by mimicry and ilinx.” (Caillois 88) Coover’s sense of playfulness in the book has as usual become a deliberate strategy to stimulate readers to reexamine cultural codes and established patterns of thought. Structured in the similar vein to his first novel The Origin of the Brunists, Coover’s second book The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop., demonstrates a strong sense of playfulness. In the novel centered on the tabletop baseball game, Coover equates the play-impulse with fiction-making. Compared to Justin Miller, the self-conscious game-player in The Origin of the Brunists, the protagonist is a more devoted “homo luden” and his game encompasses the four categories of play defined by Roger Caillois: agon, alea, mimicry and ilinx. Unlike most fictions about sports or games, Coover’s book is ludic in that it writes about a man playing a game, involves the particular pattern and regulations of baseball game, and constructs its text by using the structure of the game to develop plot, characters and action. His play with characters still shows continuity in basic concerns and bears resemblances to his other fictions. Coover, the game-master, is playing with Henry, with language and myth. The playfulness of the novel is demonstrated in Henry’s construction of a baseball league through elaborate patterns of numerological coincidences and his cautious naming of his baseball players. Henry’s manipulation of game rules leads to the corruption of games, a situation elaborated by Caillois when a player cannot distinguish fact from fiction and identifies himself with the characters he has created. By creating Henry’s game-world, Coover rejects the notion that novels should be a truthful account of reality and that there is a stable, objective historical truth. Instead, he advocates an acceptance of uncertainty and chance, and suggests multiple possibilities of interpretations. Gerald’s Party is Coover’s fourth book to be studied in this dissertation. In his mixture of genres, discourses and voices, Coover plays a game with fictional codes, invoking the elements of the detective code to produce and then to disappoint readers’ expectations for detective fiction. Coover’s penchant to deconstruct and disrupt the established key elements in the tradition—the social hierarchies, the logic of detection—is remarkable. In Caillois’s terms, Coover is playing a game with a strong ilinx impulse, achieved through the descriptions of dizzying noises, voices and non sequitur at the party. The desire of vertigo is fulfilled when guests are indulged in alcohol, gratuitous sex, and airy conversations and get involved in slapstick comedy. The pursuit of vertigo persists until the end of the party. The game that Coover plays with the reader is conducted through the use of “misdirection”, proliferation of misleading clues, the creation of a dogmatic player and an anti-climactic denouement. In Coover’s game with the reader, the balance between “the need for surprise and the need for believability” of detective fiction (Ames 89) is parodied, producing a sense of humor, illogic and implausibility. Besides its playfulness, Gerald’s Party displays much affinity between Coover’s party novel and postmodernist literature. The dozens of guests are faceless, nameless, and characterless, with their voices and conversations intermingling with and intercepted by each other. The intertwining voices, bodily conflicts, and ensuing uncanny murders enmesh the readers in confusion and lead to the frustration of their expectations. Establishing his position as a significant writer, Coover has contributed a lot to the refashioning of American literature through his subversion of narrative conventions, blending satire with burlesques, verbal games and impersonal comments on history, politics, myth, religion and American society. However, the elusiveness of his writing, the raunchy diction, and lengthy and excessive details are quite a blemish on his writing. In a word, Robert Coover has made and will continue to make great contributions to contemporary American literature.

学位：文学博士

院系专业：外文学院英语语言文学系_英语语言文学

学号：12020070153883