（英语语言文学专业论文）尤金·奥尼尔早期作品与晚期作品的比较研究——从悲剧到非悲剧.pdf

vi 摘 要 尤金奥尼尔，美国最伟大的剧作家，一生写了 50 多部剧本。人们普遍认为他是 一个悲剧作家，但是在他 30 多年的剧作生涯中，他不但逐渐成为成熟的剧作家，而且 由于受到所处时代的影响他的创作观点也发生了巨大的变化， 只用悲剧来概括他所有的 作品或是把他称为一个悲剧作家是片面的。事实上，奥尼尔 20 多年都致力于悲剧的创 作，可渐渐地，他开始意识到自己的愚蠢，在这样一个嘈杂，无意义，支离破碎的世界 里是不可能诞生悲剧的：悲剧是一种英雄崇拜，而现在的时代却以毁灭英雄为乐，因此 在他剧作生涯的晚期，他再也无法写悲剧了。 “在极度的失望中，奥尼尔只能写他所看 到的，而这种亲身体会的，不加修饰的绝望成为了他后期作品的主题，并使他的后期作 品毫无争议的成为他的最好作品。 ” （(1)事实上， 正是因为奥尼尔在他后期作品中真实的展 现了现代人荒诞的生活本质而没有考虑悲剧所要求的什么人的尊严，才使他变的不朽。 这篇论文就是用威特尼詹尼森奥次的悲剧理论通过对他前期和后期作品的比较 研究来体现他在创作上从悲剧到非悲剧的这种转变。在奥次看来，悲剧有一些最基本的 假定。 首先, 在悲剧里， 人有一个可以选择自己行为的自由意志， 并对自己的行为负责。 第二，在悲剧中存在一种超人的力量。第三，悲剧肯定人的尊严和价值。因此，自由意 志，超人力量和人的尊严构成了悲剧三个最基本的要素。 本文也就相应分成了三章，每一章对应这三要素中的一点。而在每一章中，都会把 前期和后期的作品针对这三要素中的一点进行比较。 第一章是关于第一要素： 自由意志， 尽管他前期作品中的主人公都有一个自由意志， 而他的后期作品中的主人公最明显的特 征就是自由意志的丧失。第二章讨论的是第二个要素：超人力量，如果在他的前期作品 中悲剧人物被一个他无法控制的像希腊悲剧中神一样的超人力量推向毁灭， 那么在他后 期作品中我们有的只是一种否定的命运，生存的矛盾，因为推动他们的力量没有任何神 奇之处，我们非常清楚他们为什么那样，为了活着他们别无选择。第三章则针对最后一 个要素： 人的尊严。 在他的早期作品中悲剧主人公对命运进行反抗并对自己的行为负责， 这使我们看到了人性的高贵。而他后期作品中的人物则是鄙视的对象，我们所感到的不 是人的高贵而是荒诞。 由于奥尼尔是一个有 50 多部剧作的多产作家，由于时间和空间的限制，本文不可 能把这 50 多部作品都涉及到，所以本文选了 4 个剧本： 榆树下的欲望 ， 悲悼 ， 送 冰的人来了 ， 长日入夜行作为文本分析的基础。榆树下的欲望 （1924） ， 悲悼 vii （1929）代表他的前期作品； 送冰的人来了 （1939）和长日如夜行 （1941）则是 他后期作品的代表。 关键词关键词：自由意志 超人力量 人的尊严 高贵 荒诞 iv abstract eugene oneill, the greatest american playwright, wrote more than 50 plays during his lifetime. people generally consider him as a tragedian, but during his long dramatic career, he not only matured as a dramatist, but also responded sensitively to the temper of his age. he spent two decades on the mission of reviving greek tragedy in modern times which was reflected in his earlier works. but gradually it began to dawn on him that it is impossible to write tragedy in such a discordant, meaningless and broken world. tragedy, a mode of hero worship could not thrive in an age that takes delight in breaking idols. so his hope of tragedy died in modern times. “in his disillusionment, oneill could only write what he saw. however, this powerfully-felt, unembellished vision, acquired at great personal cost to the playwright, which informs the subjects of all his late plays, makes them indisputable masterpieces.”(1) as a matter of fact, what makes oneill immortal is precisely the fact that in the last phase of his dramatic career, he had captured the mood of his age by giving a truthful account of the modern peoples absurdity, without bothering about tragic exultation. thus it is impossible to use a generalized concept like tragedy to refer to all his plays, nor is it proper to call him a tragedian. so this paper tries to make a comparison between his earlier plays and late ones to show the evolution of his plays from tragedies to non-tragedies by using the tragedy theory of whitney jennings oates. according to him, tragedy always makes certain assumptions. in the first place, it always seems to assume that man has a free will to choose his own actions and takes responsibility for his action. the second assumption is that over and above man there exists some superhuman force or power. the last assumption that tragedy seems consistently to make is the fundamental dignity and worth of man. thus, the freedom of his will, the existence of a superhuman force and the dignity of man form the three elements of tragedy. so naturally this paper falls into three chapters, with each chapter corresponding to one of the three elements. within each chapter, there is a contrast between his earlier works and late plays regarding one element of tragedy. therefore, chapter i is concerned with the first element: the exertion of free will. while in his earlier plays, there is always an exertion of free will by the tragic heroes, in his late works the most predominant feature of the characters is v the loss of free will; chapter ii is related with the superhuman power. if in his earlier works the heroes are brought to destruction by a superhuman power like fate or god that is beyond their control, in his late works what we have is a godless world where we do have fate, kismet, but it is a negative fate, not the one in the greek sense, for there is nothing mysterious about it. under the working of such a fate, the moderns are placed in an undesirable position, the existentialist irony, where he can neither affirm nor break his pipedreams; chapter iii deals with the last element of tragedy, the dignity of man. in his earlier works, we can always feel a touch of human nobility in his reaction against fate and his willingness to assume responsibility, which arouses in us a feeling of admiration and wonder; in his late works man is an object of disgust, clinging for life to a pipedream which had unmanned him. instead of seeing nobility stemming from perversity, what we view is absurdity lurking behind the heroic self-image. thus we can not admire or wonder but we can understand and forgive. as oneill is a prolific writer with an output of more than 50 plays, it is impossible to cover every one of his plays in this thesis due to time and space limit. so 4 plays: desire under the elms(1924), mourning becomes electra(1929-1931), the iceman cometh(1939) and long days journey into night(1941) are chosen as the basis of textual analysis, with the first two representing his earlier plays and the rest standing for his late ones. key words: free will superhuman force dignity of man nobility absurdity iii 学位论文原创性声明 学位论文原创性声明 本人所提交的学位论文 a comparative study of eugene oneills earlier plays and late ones - from tragedies to nontragedies，是在导师的指导下，独立 进行研究工作所取得的原创性成果。除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不包含任何 其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的研究成果。 对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集 体，均已在文中标明。 本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师确认（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 学位论文版权使用授权书 学位论文版权使用授权书 本学位论文作者完全了解河北师范大学有权保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交学 位论文的复印件和磁盘，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权河北师范大学可以将学位论 文的全部或部分内容编入有关数据库进行检索，可以采用影印、缩印或其它复制手段保 存、汇编学位论文。 （保密的学位论文在 年解密后适用本授权书） 论文作者（签名） ： 指导教师（签名） ： 年 月 日 年 月 日 1 introduction a. a brief introduction to eugene oneill and the drastic change of his works eugene oneill, american greatest playwright, brought international prestige to american drama. before oneill, america had only theatre; after him, american drama took on significance. he made his debut in 1915 into a theatrical arena which presented nothing but simplistic melodramas and mindless farces. the dramatic revolution which swept europe in the 1880s had not yet reached america. although oneill was not the only one who set out to transform this theatrical landscape, he was the one who made american drama the vanguard of twentieth century art. during the first years of his career, he dignified the profession of playwriting by elevating it from a purely technical role to that of a serious observer of the human conditions. he was a prize-winning playwright. during his lifetime, he received three pulitzer prizes respectively for beyond the horizon, anna christine, and strange interlude. in 1936, he was awarded the nobel prize for “the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works which embody an original conception of tragedy.”(2) in 1956, he was awarded a fourth pulitzer prize due to the great theatrical success of long days journey into night, which was published two years after his death. he was born on october 16, 1888, in a hotel then located at broadway and forty-third street, new york city. his father, james oneill, was a famous actor. with his father being an actor, it seems that the love of drama ran in his blood. in his early years, he traveled around with his fathers group and stayed in princeton, from which he was expelled one year later for misbehavior. then he went to sea and voyaged to south america and africa. back in america, he was jobless, made friends with the lowest people in society and got to know life better. this early experience of knocking about in the world was crucial for oneill, from which he drew so much in his dramatic writing. his early sea plays and many later works were related with this period of wandering and loafing about. then in the winter of 1912, he developed consumption and was sent to a sanatorium, where he read dramatic works widely, especially the works of ibsen and strindberg. after his recovery, he joined in 1914 professor bakers workshop at harvard to learn playwriting. then he moved to greenwich village, new york to 2 write plays. the year 1916 proved to be significant for both oneill and american drama. his one-act play bound east for cardiff was produced by the provincetown players, which marked the beginning of his long and successful dramatic career and ushered in the modern era of american theatre. the 1920s proved to be a golden period in oneills dramatic career. the performance of beyond the horizon received universal acclaim and won for him the first pulitzer prize. then a series of theatrical triumphs followed in quick succession: the emperor jones(1920), anna christine(1921), the hairy ape(1922), desire under the elms(1924), all gods chillun got wings(1924), the great god brown(1926), lazarus laughed(1926), strange interlude(1928), marco millions(1928), dynamo(1929), mourning becomes electra(1929-1931), ah, wilderness(1933). then after a short period of silence due to illness, came another golden period in oneills dramatic career, the span of five years(1939-1943), in which he wrote his late plays, the iceman cometh(1939), hughie(1940), long days journey into night(1941), a moon for the misbegotten(1943). “these last four plays, the ending of his tortuous journey, crown oneills formidable career.”(3) a prolific playwright, he wrote more than 50 plays, most of which were tragedies, but not all. it must be realized that it is impossible to talk about a generalized concept of oneills vision and approach, the way we refer to shakespearean tragedy or shavian comedy. during the three decades of his artistic career, oneill not only matured as an artist, but also responded sensitively to the changing temper of the modern age.(4) at the outset of his career, his main aim was to create a modern equivalent of greek tragedy. in 1921 oneill said, “to me, the tragic alone has that significant beauty which is truth.”(5) in 1925 he said, “im always acutely conscious of force behind - fate, god, one calls it - mystery certainly - and of the one eternal tragedy of man in his glorious, self-destructive struggle to make the force express him instead of being, as an animal is, an infinitesimal incident in its expression.”(6) this accounts for the fact that the plays written before 1939 were tragedies, in which man fought a glorious, self-destructive struggle against the eternal odds, not conquering, but perhaps inevitably being conquered. then gradually he became aware of the sickness of today. the sheer despair generated by the great war, which was without 3 precedent in human history in that never had so many nations taken up arms at a single time, never had the fighting been so gruesome, never had the battlefield been so vast, and the unemployment of the millions caused by the great depression, a worldwide economic downturn, as well as the hovering clouds of world war ii, led to a total disenchantment in the 1940s. shocked by the ghastly acts of man and experiencing the neurosis of the time, writers could not write tragedies, when existence came to be given greater importance than the essence of life. man now was not endowed with dignity by the virtue of his struggle; he is a bare, forked animal, spending his life trying to live up to a lie. living in such a disillusioned, hopeless, neurotic world, oneill could not affirm life as he did in his earlier plays. it is somewhat pathetic to hear him say that the war helped him realize that he was putting his faith in the old values which were gone and that it was very sad but there were no values to live by today. thus in his late works, written between 1939 and 1943, he presented existence itself - utterly naked, insignificant and absurd. they (the iceman cometh and long days journey into night) represent the fact that oneills life-long quest for values ended in failure. if his earlier frustrated characters manage to retain some faith in life, then the group of the misfits in the iceman cometh and tyrone family in long days journey into night have nothing but the night stretching before them. (7) indeed, oneills late plays reflected the post-war mood, when the theatre of the absurd came into vogue, the theme of which “centers on the meaninglessness of life with its pain and suffering that seems funny, even ridiculous.”(8) however, whether his plays are tragic or untragic, oneill had always been true to his dramatic quest. the fact that he won 4 pulitzer prizes and a nobel prize and that his best works were his late ones proves this. though the age made it impossible for him to write tragedy, he himself had always been a tragic hero in his ceaseless pursuit for a better form of art. 4 b. literature review eugene oneill, being a famous playwright, has always been the subject of discussion. when he was alive, thousands of gossip columnists, house and home journalists, religious writers and drama critics commented on his plays. since his death in 1953, scholars both at home and abroad have made a research on his relationship to virtually every major literary figure in the western world. classicists, modernists, post-modernists and feminists have written a lot about him and his plays, trying to make an investigation and evaluation of his family, the sources of his plots and characters, his attitude towards women, his philosophy, his colleagues, his letters and even his unfinished plays. however, unlike most oneills critics, who have been concerned with the autobiographical elements in his plays, the original in life, the sources of his ideas or biblical interpretations, there are some critics who have paid attention just to the plays themselves. some regarded his plays as tragedies, taking it for granted that oneill devoted his whole life to the writing of great tragedies. doris v. falks eugene oneill and the tragic tension, sees oneills tragic conception of life as an endless struggle between opposite images of the self, which applies to all his plays. although he realizes in oneills late plays man is no longer a courageous hero of tragic struggle but merely a coward capable of doing nothing significant, he still thinks it is tragic and that the only difference is that here what we have is a perfect equilibrium instead of a struggle between self and the self-conception. the aesthetics of failure: dynamic structure in the plays of eugene oneills works by zander brietzke, tries to analyze the structure in oneills works from a theatre directors point of view. in his opinion, the basis for oneills tragic vision is mainly nietzchean, asserting nietzsches two books thus spake zarathustra and the birth of tragedy have exerted a big influence on oneill. suffering as the context from which tragedy emerges leads to the individuals ultimate failure or death. nietzsche views this struggle as spiritually uplifting. zander brietzke thinks so is the case with oneills tragic vision. feng guojuns eugene oneill: an inheritor and reformer of traditions of the ancient greek tragedy mainly discusses the influence of greek tragedy on oneills plays, claiming that oneill both inherits and develops greek tragedy, thus making his own plays modern 5 tragedies. an guopings on the formation and development of eugene oneills tragic thoughts, asserts many factors such as personal misfortune, the influence of western philosophy and psychology contributing to oneills tragic thought, not just greek tragedy or nietzchean philosophy. this is perspective but less true in that it neglects the anti-tragic nature in oneills late plays. but there are also critics who have noticed the untragic nature in oneills plays. conture in time by travis bogard not only deals with each play, but also the theatrical conditions of its production and the critical responses it generated in a chronologically order. in it travis bogard realizes the change in oneills plays, “after the long poetically-oriented quest he had conducted through the plays of the 1920s, seeking a god to which men could spiritually belong, oneill at last has come to agree with nietzche that man live in a godless world.”(9) needless to say man could not be tragic in a world devoid of god when it is existence rather than essence that was given greater importance. in eugene oneill, normand berlin declares that oneills late plays form a sharp contrast with his earlier ones by staring directly at mans existence. “during this period, oneill wrote his modern plays, presenting a vision of man not far from that of samuel beckett.”(10) berlin regards oneills late plays as tragi-comedy where comedy and tragedy lose distinction. the only pity is that berlin just mentions this change, but provides no convincing evidence. similarly, in perverse mind: eugene oneills struggle with closure, barbara voglino observes both the iceman cometh and long days journey into night lack significant physical action and that they in many ways seem a forerunner of absurd drama. needless to say that there is a great difference between tragedy and absurd drama. in his opinion these late plays represent the summit of oneills works by depicting the existential dilemma of the moderns without bothering about tragic affirmation but at the same time he regards oneills earlier tragedies as imperfect and less ingenious. in tragedy, modern temper and oneill, chaman ahuja realizes the dynamic nature of oneills works. he further points out the incompatibility of yoking modernism