Ex-centric Voices: The English Language Short Story in Wales

短篇小说一直是威尔士英语作家文学表达的主要形式，特别是在20世纪上半叶出现的英语文学传统；许多威尔士最杰出的作家，包括艾伦·刘易斯、迪伦·托马斯、里斯·戴维斯和格温·托马斯，都广泛而成功地使用了这种形式。但迄今为止，还没有系统地考虑为什么会这样，这种形式吸引了，并继续吸引着，讲英语的威尔士作家。也没有人研究过这部短篇小说直接或间接地揭示了那个时期威尔士人在英语中的身份（约75-80%的威尔士人的经历）。本研究将是第一个对威尔士短篇小说形式的意义进行的书级分析，通过对该类型的一系列主要从业者的作品进行理论化的检查，以期建立该类型的反复出现的特征，包括文学技巧和主题关注，并提出这些特征的原因。弗兰克·奥康纳（Frank O'Connor）是一位杰出的短篇小说作家，在他对短篇小说类型的影响深远的研究《孤独的声音》（1963）中，他认为短篇小说的特点是表达了他所认为的边缘化社区的经历，以及这些社区中的个人，以及社会、政治和文化权力有限的群体。后来的短篇小说理论家倾向于遵循和发展奥康纳的观点。克莱尔·汉森（Clare Hanson）在《重读短篇小说》（rereading the Short Story, 1989）中特别指出，短篇小说经常涉及她所认为的“非中心”文化群体，“在主要权力中心之外……不属于官方或“高级”文化霸权；她认为，短篇小说似乎经常是流亡者的一种表达形式，“作家渴望回到他被剥夺的家乡文化”。这似乎与威尔士英语作家的经历直接相关；他/她在地理上、文化上和政治上感到被边缘化；他/她会说英语，但不是英语，他/她也意识到，由于社会变革和英语教育，他/她无法说他们祖先所说的语言，而且经常是他们家庭中年长的成员所说的语言，因此他/她的本土传统“无家可归”。他们用英语写作，但仍能听到威尔士语言和文化。这项研究对汉森关于短篇小说作家“无家可归”的概念进行了质疑和发展，通过考虑弗洛伊德关于Unheimlich的文章中的威尔士短篇小说，通常被翻译为“不可思议”或“不寻常”。弗洛伊德认为，神秘的经历根植于一种对身份的不安感，一种关于一个人如何与周围世界联系的不安全感，一种可能是短暂的或更根深蒂固的不安。正如弗洛伊德和他最近的英国评论家尼古拉斯·罗伊尔（《不可思议》，2003）指出的那样，不可思议可能是由于熟悉的感觉变得不熟悉，反之亦然。这种与周围世界的陌生感确实在威尔士的短篇小说中反复表现出来，例如迪伦·托马斯和格林·琼斯的超现实主义，以及艾伦·刘易斯的主人公反复经历的身份不安全感。该研究认为，这是威尔士英语作家所经历的更广泛的边缘化感和文化不安全感的一种表现。这种边缘性也表现在，例如，对孤立或“无家可归”状态的主题关注，以及混合语言的使用——文学英语、地方口语、残余威尔士语的方言元素——这可能被视为将这种写作与混合模式联系起来，像Homi Bhabha这样的评论家认为混合模式是后殖民文学的特征。

The short story has been a major form of literary expression for the English-language writers of Wales, especially as an English-language literary tradition emerged in the first-half of the twentieth century; a number of Wales's most distinguished writers including Alun Lewis, Dylan Thomas, Rhys Davies and Gwyn Thomas have used the form extensively and successfully. But there has as yet been no systematic consideration as to why this should be, what it is about the form that appealed, and continues to appeal, to the Anglophone Welsh writer. Nor has there been an examination of what this short fiction reveals, directly and indirectly, about the experience of Welsh identity in English (the experience of some 75-80% of Welsh people) in the period. The present study will be the first book-length analysis of the significance of the short story form in Wales, by a theorized examination of the work of a range of the major practitioners in the genre, with a view to establishing recurring features of the genre, including literary techniques as well as thematic concerns, and to suggesting reasons for such features.In his influential study of the genre, The Lonely Voice (1963) Frank O'Connor, himself a distinguished short story writer, suggested that the short story characteristically expresses the experience of what he sees as marginalized communities, and individuals within such communities, groups with a sense of limited social, political and cultural power. Later theorists writing on the short story have tended to follow and develop O'Connor's view. In particular, Clare Hanson (Re-reading the Short Story, 1989) has suggested that the short story frequently deals with what she sees as 'ex-centric' cultural groups, 'outside the main centers of power [...] not part of official or 'high' cultural hegemony'; she suggests that the short story seems frequently to have been the form of expression of the exile, 'The writer who longs for a return to a home culture which is denied him'. This seems directly relevant to the experience of the Welsh writer in English; s/he feels a sense of marginality, geographically, culturally and politically; s/he is English-speaking, yet not English, and is also aware of being 'unhomed' from his/her native tradition by being unable, because of social change and English-language education, to speak the language spoken by their ancestors and, frequently, older members of their families. They write in English, but the Welsh language and culture remain in earshot. The study interrogates and develops Hanson's notion of the the short story writer as being 'unhomed' by considering the short story in Wales in terms of Freud's essay on the Unheimlich, usually translated as the 'Uncanny'' or the 'unhomely'. Freud sees the experience of the Uncanny as being rooted in a sense of unease in one's identity, an insecurity as to how one relates to one's surrounding world, an unease which might be momentary or more deep-rooted. The Uncanny, as Freud and his recent British commentator, Nicholas Royle (The Uncanny, 2003) indicate, can result from a sense of that which is familiar becoming unfamiliar or vice versa. This sense of defamiliarization from the surrounding world is indeed repeatedly manifested in the short story in Wales, e.g. in the surrealism of Dylan Thomas and Glyn Jones, and in the repeated insecurity of identity experienced by the protagonists of Alun Lewis. It is a manifestation, the study argues, of the wider sense of marginality and cultural insecurity experienced by the Welsh writer in English. This marginality is also manifested, for instance, in a thematic concern with states of isolation or 'homelessness' and use of hybrid registers--literary English, local colloquialism, vernacular elements of residual Welsh--which may be be seen to relate this writing to modes of hybridity which critics like Homi Bhabha have seen as characterising postcolonial literatures.