The Impact of Modern European Thought on American Renaissance

本研究取得了两项主要成果：发表于《日本美国文学学会会刊》的《‘拍眼’佩(g)格船长/亚哈：赫尔曼·梅尔维尔对1850年《白鲸》手稿的反民族主义修订》和发表于《英国文学研究》的《美国辩证法的发展：赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的《比利·布德》与霍桑的《大理石羊神》的共鸣与对比》。在前一篇文章中，我从梅尔维尔在《亚哈船长》中反映的是笛卡尔的精神和肉体二元论还是事物本身这个问题开始争论，并推测梅尔维尔对《白鲸》手稿的修改是他对文本“事物”不稳定态度的表现。在此推测的基础上，我提出了《白鲸》的修改与当时的政治形势密切相关的论点，梅尔维尔将独腿船长的角色从Pe(g)腿变成了Ahab，以疏远自己与美国民主意识形态的关系。这种转变显示了梅尔维尔对身体或事物本身，或作为事物的文本的不稳定反应，这证明了他注意到身体的本体论的不可言说性或事物本身无法被笛卡尔唯心论所解决。在后一篇文章中，我分析了赫尔曼·梅尔维尔的《比利·Budd》和纳撒尼尔·霍桑的《大理石羊怪》，他们的最后两部小说出版时间相隔多年，而且是在他们热情的友谊消退很久之后。最重要的是，这两部作品处理的是同一个主题，一个无辜的年轻人的杀人行为。在这个主题背后隐藏着一个重要的社会哲学问题：如果在自然的思想之下潜藏着激烈的暴力，人类如何将这种兽性冲动引导到一种驯服的、无害的状态？简单地说，野性的自然如何通过文明的过程被重新配置？对此，他们提出了相反的答案；霍桑笔下的多纳泰罗通过忏悔变成了一个聪明的人，而比利·巴德则被处死。值得注意的是，比利原来的清白依旧。在两位作家达成这种分歧之前，他们的文本通过发现康德现象背后隐藏的不可驯服的本质和接受黑格尔的进步主义而相互共鸣和对比。本文通过对这一发展过程的阐释，并将这两位作家置于西方哲学的脉络中，考察他们对人从自然状态向社会人的成长的看法，从而明确多纳泰罗和比利的不同命运所代表的意义。在分析他们的观点时，本文使用了黑格尔的术语，“中介”指的是将一个对象与精神或语言意义联系起来的行为，“直接性”指的是一个对象与任何精神或语言意义断开的状态。康德将外在现象定义为人的内在状态的反映，并指出反映背后的东西或“事物本身”是无法被认识的。霍桑和梅尔维尔在他们早期的作品中批判了这种观点。例如，霍桑的眼光超越了这种反思，他把珠儿塑造成另一个象征海丝特罪恶心灵的红字，同时也是一个失去“对世界的参照和适应”的人物。虽然珠儿正在融入社会，但她的野性拒绝在康德对内心状态的外化中被编纂。梅尔维尔笔下的亚哈船长将《白鲸记》视为自己邪恶本性的反映，同时又试图超越“所有可见的物体”或人类经验的极限，与自然融为一体。显然，多纳泰罗的“野蛮的凶狠”跟随着珠儿的情况。他无法抑制自己的野性，试图谋杀安东尼奥。然而，在事件发生后，多纳泰罗学会了感知自己罪恶心灵的反映，并以一种新的方式恢复了“古老的羊怪的甜美和令人愉快的特征”，这意味着他过去反映在羊怪身上的本性已经被他新获得的智慧所调解。现在的他已经不是以前的他了。因此，他的存在处于精神与物质、内在与外在、过去与现在的不断中介之中，他的个性也不断更新。在这里，霍桑超越了康德的现象学，采用了黑格尔的进步主义。另一方面，虽然梅尔维尔对比利·巴德的刻画类似于霍桑的多纳泰罗，比利和多纳泰罗犯了同样的罪，但比利的自然状态并没有改变。在某种意义上，比利的口吃可以被解释为黑格尔调解失败的例子。相反，梅尔维尔通过描述一个水手根据比利的悲剧创作了一首歌谣，找到了一种恢复美的方法，不是通过精神上的操作，而是通过记忆的运作直接整合过去的经历。在最后阶段，两位作家发现了截然不同的审美。少

This study brought forth two main achievements : "'Clap eye on' Captain Pe(g)leg/Ahab : Herman Melville's Anti-Nationalistic Revision of the 1850 Manuscript of Moby-Dick" submitted to The Journal of the American Literature Society of Japan and "Development of American Dialectics : Resonance and Contrast between Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun" submitted to Studies in English Literature. In the former article, I began the arguments from the question of whether Melville reflected on Captain Ahab the Cartesian dualism of spirit and body or the thing itself, and surmised that Melville's revision of the manuscripts of Moby-Dick was the manifestation of his instable attitude toward the textual "thing." On the basis of this surmise, I developed the thesis that the revision of Moby-Dick was in close relation to the political situation of those days, and Melville shifted the role of an one-legged captain from Pe(g)leg to Ahab in order to alienate himself f … More rom the ideology of American democracy. This shift shows Melville's instable response to the body or the thing itself, or to the text as a thing, which is the evidence of his noticing of ontological ineffability of the body or the thing itself incapable of being resolved by the Cartesian spiritualism.In the latter article, I analyzed Herman Melville's Billy Budd and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, their last novels published many years apart and long after the fading of their ardent friendship. Above all, the two works deal with the same motif, an innocent young man's murderous act. Behind this motif lies an important socio-philosophic issue : if there lurks fierce violence beneath a natural mind, how can human beings guide that animalistic impulse to a tamed, harmless condition? To put it in a simple way, how can wild nature be reconfigured through civilizing process? Upon this, they propose opposite answers ; while Hawthorne's Donatello changes into an intelligent being through penitence, Billy Budd is executed to death. Significantly, Billy's original innocence remains the same.Before the two writers reached such difference, their texts had resonated and contrasted with each other through the discovery of untamable nature concealed behind the Kantian phenomena and the acceptance of the Hegelian progressivism. By explicating the process of this development and locating the two writers in a stream of Western philosophy, this essay looks into their views of human growth from natural states to social beings, and then makes clear what Donatello and Billy's different destinies signify. In analyzing their ideas, this essay uses Hegel's terms, "mediation" which means an act of connecting an object with spiritual or linguistic meanings and "immediacy" which means a state of an object disconnected with any spiritual or linguistic meanings.Kant defines the external phenomena as reflection of a human being's inner state, and states that what lies behind reflection, or "the thing itself" cannot be recognized. Hawthorne and Melville criticize this idea in their early works. For example, Hawthorne looks beyond this reflection, creating Pearl both as another scarlet letter signifying Hester's sinful mind and as a character who loses "reference and adaptation to the world." Though Pearl is being built into the society, her wild nature resists being codified in the Kantian externalization of the inner state. Melville's Captain Ahab looks at Moby Dick as the reflection of his own evil nature, and at the same time, tries to step beyond "[a]ll visible objects" or the limit of human experience, merging with nature itself.Obviously, Donatello's "savage fierceness" follows Pearl's case. He cannot repress his wild nature and tries to murder Antonio. However, after the incident, Donatello learns to sense the reflection of his sinful mind, and recovers "the sweet and delightful characteristics of the antique Faun" in a new way, which means his past nature reflected on the Faun has been mediated with his newly gained intellect. Now he is not what he was. Thus, his existence is placed in the constant mediation between the spiritual and the material, the inner and the outer, the past and the present, and his personality is always renewed. Here, Hawthorne went over the Kantian phenomenology and adopted the Hegelian progressivism. On the other hand, though Melville's characterization of Billy Budd is analogous to Hawthorne's Donatello and Billy commits the same crime as Donatello, Billy's natural state does not change. In a meaning, Billy's stutter can be interpreted as the case of failure in the Hegelian mediation. Rather, Melville, by describing a sailor who composes a ballad from Billy's tragedy, finds a way of recovering beauty not through spiritual operation, but through immediate integration of past experiences by the workings of memory. At the final stage, the two writers found the highly different aesthetics. Less