Women's Cultural Function in the Rise of the English Novel

这是对英国小说起源的重新思考从女性形象和女性作家和女演员的文化功能的角度来看，在复辟和十八世纪的英国。很明显，女性形象和实际女性（作家和女演员）代表了小说形式创作的社会和文化趋势。由于种种原因，这项研究主要关注的是复辟时期一位具有代表性的女作家阿芙拉·本恩。首先，贝恩是英国文学史上第一位职业女性作家，这与普遍的文化转型密切相关。小说的基础可能是本恩在当时无耻的自我主义男性文化中建立和保护自己身份的斗争。其次，贝恩的写作生涯似乎代表了主流文学形式从戏剧向小说的转变。在她的晚年，她写了几篇散文浪漫小说，包括她著名的中篇小说《奥罗诺科》。的确，1682年，由于两家特许剧院的合并，她被迫冒险进入利润丰厚的浪漫小说写作领域。剧院的合并对像贝恩这样的职业剧作家来说是一个沉重的打击，他们依赖剧院的收入。然而，这种转变给贝恩的写作方式带来了实质性的转变。她找到了一种更好的媒介来表达女性在当时以男性为中心的文化中的困境。尤其是在她的最后一部浪漫小说《奥罗诺科》中，我们可以看到从第一部分的浪漫叙事向第二部分的现实主义叙事转变的文化动力的转变。这有力地证明了女性的文化功能促成了18世纪小说的诞生。

This is a reconsideration of the origin of the English novel in terms of the image of women and the cultural function of women writers and actresses of the Restoration and eighteenth century England. It has been made clear that the image of women and actual women (authors and actresses) represent the social and cultural trend towards the creation of the novel form. The study has been mainly concerned with one representative woman writer of the Restoration, Aphra Behn, for several reasons. First, the fact that Behn was the first professional woman writer in the history of English Literature is closely connected to the generic cultural transformation. The foundations of the novel may be found in the struggle of Behn to establish and protect her identity in the unashamedly egotistical male culture of the time. Secondly, Behn's career as a writer seems to represent the shift of the dominant literary form from the drama to the novel. In her late years she wrote several prose romances including her famous novella Oroonoko. It is true that she was forced to venture into the field of lucrative romance writing by the union of the two licensed theatres in 1682. The merger of the theatres was a crushing blow to professional playwrights such as Behn who depended on the income from the playhouses. However, this shift brought about a substantial transformation of Behn's way of writing. She has found a better medium for the expression of the predicaments of women in the male-centered culture of the time. Especially, in her last romance, Oroonoko, we can witness the shifting cultural dynamism in the transition of the romance narrative in the first part to the realism of the second part. This is a definitive proof of women's cultural function that brought about the birth of the novel in the eighteenth century.