A Systematic Study of Faulkner's Legacy in Contemporary American Literature

本文通过对威廉·福克纳的文学遗产在当代美国文学中应该追求的几个方面的系统探讨，首先通过对他的两位同时代的伟大作家托马斯·沃尔夫和尤金·奥尼尔的研究，抓住了福克纳小说的重要特征：前者来自南方山麓，后者来自新英格兰：这些特征是-(1)对地区历史和身份的探索，(2)意识流的运用，(3)小说形式的不断创新，(4)原住民材料和实验材料的有机结合，现代小说家形式，(5)过去的现在的历史感，(6)魔幻现实主义中使用的超自然元素的引入，(7)对人类现象的对立性表现，(8)作品的编年史结构，(9)作为Ho…的家庭关系的心理调查(10)关注元小说思想，(11)加尔文主义对环境力量是宿命的认识。其次，基于福克纳小说世界的这些特点，作者从种族和阶级两个角度，结合性别，揭示了南方社会在奴隶制和南北战争失败的巨大磨难中遭受的精神本质，这是当代文学研究的基本观点。第三，当代研究者认为威廉·斯泰伦和托妮·莫里森是福克纳在当代文学中留下遗产的真正继承者，从中产阶级家庭悲剧中的父女乱伦关系来研究前者，而在后者的小说中从肤色和凝视的等级制度来探索非裔美国人的表现，这种等级制度与最近文学批评中的一个热点问题--种族--息息相关。在本报告的结尾处，就这三位作者对奴隶制的关注和代表性进行了简短的补充研究。较少

Through a systematic exploration of some aspects of William Faulkner's literary legacy which should be pursued in contemporary American litera-ture, the present investigator first grasped the important characteristics of Faulkner's fiction, by focusing on his two contemporary great authors, Thomas Wolfe and Eugene O'Neill, the former from the Piedmont of the South, and the latter from New England : those characteristics are---(1) the exploration of the regional history and identidy, (2) the use of the stream of consciousness, (3) the incessant renovation of the form of the novel, (4) the organic combination of the aboriginal material and the experimental, modern novelist form, (5) the historical sense of the presentness of the past, (6) the introduction of the supernatural elements used in magic realism, (7) the antithetical representation of the human phenomena, (8) the chronicle-like construction of the oeuvre, (9) the psychological investigation of the famil-ial relationship as a ho … More tbed of human conflicts, (10) concern with the idea of metafiction, (11) the Calvinistic recognition of the environmental force as fatality.Next, based on these characteristics of Faulkner's fictional world, the present researcher made clear the peculial qualities of Southern society, which suffered from the great ordeal of the aftermath of the slavery and the defeat in the Civil War, employing two points of view of "race" and class, the essential viewpoints, together with gender, for the contemporary literary study.Thirdly, the present investigator, regarding William Styron and Toni Morrison as the authentic sucessors to Faulkner's legacy in contemporary American literature, studied the former in terms of the incestuous relation between father and daughter in the tragedy of the while middle-class family, while exploring in the latter's fiction the representation of African-Americans in light of the hierarchy of color and gaze, a hierarchy deeply entangled with "race, " a hot issue in the recent literary criticism. At the end of this report is placed a brief supplementary research concerning both these three autors' concern with and representation of the slavery. Less