（英语语言文学专业论文）对史蒂芬·克莱恩生活与作品的存在主义研究.pdf

对史蒂芬克莱恩生活与作品的存在主义研究 ii摘摘 要要 本文的理论出发点是美国自然主义作家史蒂芬克莱恩和以爱弥尔左拉为代表的正统自然主义作家之间的分歧：自由与责任。而这也正是自然主义与存在主义之间的主要分歧。本文认为，克莱恩绝不是一个虔诚的纯自然主义信仰者。通过对克莱恩生活和作品的进一步挖掘，本文发现克莱恩和存在主义最典型的代表让-保尔萨特之间有着惊人的相似之处，由此本文决定用存在主义分析史蒂芬克莱恩的生活与作品，以期从与自然主义相反的角度解读天才作家克莱恩。 在对克莱恩的生活和作品进行存在主义分析之前， 本文首先简单介绍了萨特的个人生活、哲学思想和文学作品，以从整体上对萨特的存在主义获得一个基本的了解，并重点介绍了几个关键的理论概念，如自由、责任、境遇、自欺、与他人的关系等，以方便后文的具体分析。 对克莱恩生活的剖析主要抓住他个人生活中的叛逆性以及他与其作品关系的独特性来进行，以说明他对自由与责任的理解和重视。而对克莱恩作品的分析将分两步进行。 首先是对存在主义思想表现明显的四篇小说 红色英勇勋章 、蓝色旅馆 、海上扁舟和怪物按上文提到的关键概念作归类分析。然后再对存在主义思想表现最不明显的一篇小说街头女郎玛吉作特例分析，并结合女性主义得出，正是因为作者对女主角玛吉的同情和偏袒降低了对她的要求， 才导致作品中自由与责任的主题不凸显。之后本文还分析了该作品中另一个存在主义主题：自欺。 玛吉说明了克莱恩作品中存在主义思想的普遍性。 通过对克莱恩的生活和五篇重要小说的分析， 这项研究不仅让我们从另一个角度对克莱恩的生活和作品有了更深入、更全面的了解，而且也让我们对自身以及他人有了更清醒的认识。 关键词：自然主义；存在主义；自由；责任；自欺；与他人的关系关键词：自然主义；存在主义；自由；责任；自欺；与他人的关系 硕士学位论文 iiiabstract this thesis theoretically starts from the gap between the american naturalist stephen crane and those orthodox naturalists like amile zola: freedom and responsibility, which are exactly the largest bifurcations between naturalism and existentialism. we believe that crane is by no means a pious disciple of naturalism. after further exploring the life and works of crane, we find that he amazingly shares a lot with jean-paul sartre. based on this point, we decide to make an existential research on stephen cranes life and works from an aspect different from naturalism. before we carry on the analysis of cranes life and works, this thesis at first provides a simple introduction of sartres personal life, philosophical thoughts and literary works, with a hope to get a basic understanding of sartres existentialism on the whole. it mainly emphasizes on several key theoretical notions like freedom, responsibility, situation, bad faith, otherness and so on, to facilitate the later concrete explorations. the analysis of cranes life mainly bases on the rebellions of his personal life and the uniqueness of his relationship between his life and works, thus to show us his understanding and cherishment of freedom and responsibility. as for the exploration of his works, it generally takes two steps. firstly, it researches these key existential notions mentioned above in the four stories where existentialism is evident. they are the red badge of courage, the blue hotel, the open boat, and the monster. secondly, it will analyze maggie: a girl of the streets as a special case, which is the one with the most inconspicuous existential ideas in cranes works. combining with feminism, this thesis believes that it is due to the pity and favor of the author toward the heroine that the topics of freedom and responsibility in the work become inconspicuous. afterwards, it explores another existential theme: bad faith. maggie shows the universality of existentialism in cranes works. through these analyses of cranes life and works, this research not only makes us obtain a deeper and more thorough understanding of stephen crane from another aspect, but also helps us to know more about ourselves and about others. key words: naturalism, existentialism, freedom, responsibility, bad faith, othernes 硕士学位论文 i 湖湖 南南 大大 学学 学位论文原创性声明学位论文原创性声明 本人郑重声明： 所呈交的论文是本人在导师的指导下独立进行研究所取得的研究成果。 除了文中特别加以标注引用的内容外， 本论文不包含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写的成果作品。 对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体， 均已在文中以明确方式标明。本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。 作者签名： 日期： 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学校有关保留、使用学位论文的规定，同意学校保留并向国家有关部门或机构送交论文的复印件和电子版，允许论文被查阅和借阅。本人授权湖南大学可以将本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、缩印或扫描等复制手段保存和汇编本学位论文。 本学位论文属于 1、保密，在_年解密后适用本授权书。 2、不保密。 （请在以上相应方框内打“” ） 作者签名： 日期： 年 月 日 导师签名： 日期： 年 月 日 硕士学位论文 1chapter i introduction stephen crane (1871-1900) was a famous american naturalist at the end of the 19th century, while jean-paul sartre (1905-1980) was the most influential french existentialist in the 20th century. then the title of this thesis may seem to be strange. how can we use sartres existentialism to analyze stephen cranes life and works? the americans were not familiar with existentialism until the middle of the 20th century. crane probably even had not heard the word “existentialism” in his life. nevertheless, this is the problem this thesis dedicates itself to dealing with. stephen crane, mostly known as the author of the red badge of courage, has always been regarded as one of the forerunners of american naturalism. his first novel, maggie: a girl of the streets, was also rendered as a classic of naturalism. some home scholars like zou zhiyong thought maggies miserable fate completely resulted from such determining factors as heredity and environment1 (zou, 2000: 36). however, we find the determining forces in cranes works are not as overwhelming as in those pure naturalists writings. instead we can catch the individual endeavors, usually effective ones, made by the characters of crane, and the special concerns of the writer about the characters inner state of life. these were exactly the things rejected by the so-called pure naturalists like amile zola and frank norris. naturalism as a literary movement emerged in the late nineteenth-century france, which espoused the application of scientific principles to fictional works, was founded by amile zola. in his essay “the experimental novel”, zola such concluded his experimental method, “in a word, we should operate on the characters, the passions, on the human and social data, in the same way that the chemist and the physicist operate on inanimate beings, and as the physiologist operate on living beings. determinism dominates everything. it is scientific investigation, it is experimental reasoning, which combats one by one the hypotheses of the idealists, and which replaces purely imaginary novels by novels of observation and experiment.”2 (zola, 1993: 298) with the aim to oppose the imagination and subjectivity of idealists and romanticists, naturalists managed to analyze human beings as if they were as objective as objects. as zola said, “determinism dominates everything.” such things as environment, heredity and instincts were what naturalists highly strengthened. here is a 对史蒂芬克莱恩生活与作品的存在主义研究 2precise description of the dramatis personae under the pens of naturalists. the novelists portraiture of character became superficial; they painted types instead of individuals, and since psychology was reduced to physiology, they were apt to view merely the animality and the primitiveness of man. man was devoid of a soul and of higher ethical motives; he was a helpless creature determined by heredity and environment. consequently the characters were not ethically responsible for their actions, they were pawns driven by outer forces or inner urges; moral checks were always lacking. the principle of free will was denied and man was the victim of forces beyond his control. 3 (ahnebrink, 1993: 354) from the descriptions of zola and ahnebrink about naturalism and naturalists, we can get such a conclusion that the fate of the characters of naturalists were determined by uncontrollable forces and were thus deprived of free will and moral checks. however, the characters under stephen cranes pen did not wholly coincide with the descriptions above. although they were usually placed in some extreme milieu, such as cruel wars, horrible shipwreck, terrible life plight, they were not totally subject to the environment. some of them even achieved success over environment. meanwhile, the writer did not take all the ethical responsibility away from his characters either. in most cases, they made themselves winners or failures, heroes or cowards. they still held the basic right and obligation peculiar to human beings: freedom and responsibility, which is the exact focus of existentialism. as a matter of fact, the foreign experts of naturalism had noticed that stephen crane was by no means a faithful disciple of amile zola. they thought american naturalism was a little bit off the track of the orthodox naturalism represented by zola. oscar cargill such commented the american naturalism: “it is important to note that the leaders in the american naturalistic school are by no means convinced naturaliststhey betray themselves by pet schemes for human betterment, schemes in which no genuine and thorough-going pessimist has any legitimate interest.”4(cargill, 1993: 362) among this impure school of naturalism, stephen crane was even the one “whose debt to literary naturalism is small” 5 (thorp, 1993: 369), compared to frank norris, another representative of american naturalism. in china, however, the research of crane seemed to be much more superficial. few people remember his name, and if they do, most of them only know he was a naturalist. even some scholars said, “stephen crane was a pure naturalist.”1(zou, 2000: 37) such an original genius as 硕士学位论文 3stephen crane should by no means be confined to only one single aspect. we often wonder why it was the undeveloped remote days that witnessed the most versatile talents like leonardo da vinci and confucius. maybe the answer is that originality connotes diversification. to be gratified, there are still respectable critics, both home and abroad, having paid increasing attentions to his tendency of impressionism and modernism in form and technology. both sun honghong 6 (2001) and ren yuhua 7 (2000) found that the application of a large number of color words in the red badge of courage embodied impressionistic characteristics. chen fachun amply discussed cranes modernism in narrative skills. “by narrating from a center of consciousness, juxtaposing different points of view and tentative employment of the stream-of-consciousness technique, crane was taking a step towards abandonment of the voice of authorial omniscience and towards containment of narrative within the minds of characters.”8(chen, 1999: 33) chen also mentioned a little about cranes modernism in thoughts, about the loneliness and absurdness revealed in his works. in fact, these things about cranes modern thoughts are to be explored carefully in this thesis, from the aspect of existentialism, mainly from sartres existentialism. stephen crane was born in 1871, the same year as theodore dreiser. willa cather, gertrude stein and robert frost were all born during the following three years. only cranes amazing precocity made us think of him as belonging to the generation that preceded theirs. his products mainly included several novels, among which maggie: a girl of the streets, and the red badge of courage were the most noted two; two poetry anthologies, the black riders and war is kind; and a large number of short stories, sketches and news reports, among which the most famous ones were the open boat, the blue hotel, and the monster. these works have attracted much attention from different schools of literary criticism, including naturalism, impressionism and modernism as mentioned in the previous paragraphs. it seemed that his shortened 28-year life had been as complete and sparkling as anyone elses. only a genius like him could have lived a life like his. originality was the spring of his unusual talents. since he acclaimed that he did not belong to any schools, we can say that he lived by chance in an age when naturalism prevailing and he foresaw the next century by his foreknowledge of modernism, impressionism and as we will stress in this thesis, 对史蒂芬克莱恩生活与作品的存在主义研究 4existentialism. he had also brought influence to some big figures like ernest hemingway and joseph conrad. such a genius deserves more attention. crane was an innovative writer arising from life and existence. around half a century later, a philosophical trend called “existentialism” became pervasive all over the world. if crane had not been dead at such an early age, how cheerful he would be at sight of the climate. his life was a legend and resembled sartres in many places. we can easily find such typical existential concerns about beings in cranes writings, as freedom, responsibility, situation, abandonment, anguish, despair, otherness and bad faith. this thesis aims to seek the close connection between stephen crane and jean-paul sartre. that is, to explore cranes life and works in sartres existentialism. the second chapter is to introduce sartres existentialism and the traits of his literature. this is the theoretical basis part of the later analysis about stephen crane. the variety of existentialism itself is very rich. there are two existential schools on the whole, the christian one and the atheistic one. even in the same school, the doctrine of each existentialist may be different. therefore, here only sartres philosophyone kind of atheistic existentialism is involved, since sartre was the most influential and representative existentialist in the 20th century, and also an original genius basing his study on life and existence. the introduction will begin with the notion of freedom, for sartres existentialism was famed as a philosophy of freedom. the other important concepts such as responsibility, bad faith, abandonment, despair, anguish, otherness, and committed literature, all owe much to freedom. he was not only a famous philosopher, but first of all an excellent writer. he was the only person who refused the nobel prize for literature in the nobel history. his most famed literature form was his situation plays, many of which shared the same topics with cranes works. the third chapter is to scrutinize cranes life and to seek his existential trend from his rebellions and uniqueness. he defied his religious family by being an atheist; he defied the new york police by testifying for a prostitute; he defied victorian morality by living with a woman who owned a high-class brothel. he joined wars and thus could get closer and more direct to the society. he also owned a unique relationship with his works: he lived his life backwards, or rather he wrote it forwards. that was his unique “write-it-then-live-it” style. all his rebellions and uniqueness showed that crane acted like an existential hero whose first 硕士学位论文 5concern was his total freedom and responsibility while conflicting with his surroundings. the fourth chapter is to seek his existential tendency through analyzing five of his writings. they are maggie: a girl of the streets (1893), the red badge of courage (1895), the open boat (1897), the blue hotel (1898), and the monster (1899). the latter four stories will be first analyzed under those existential terms, while maggie will be left to the last as a special case for its heavy color of naturalism. although crane did not so obviously place freedom as the theme of his works as sartre had did in his plays of situation, such as in the flies, we can still find these typical existential key words like responsibility, situation, abandonment, anguish, despair, otherness and bad faith well illustrated in these works. sartres several situation plays will be used to facilitate the existential analysis. this part will be the main body of this thesis. in the conclusion part, on the basis of the above analysis, this thesis will first review and sum up the common points between stephen crane and jean-paul sartre. then after touching on the sporadic existential ideas in the analects of confucius, it demonstrates the universality of existential concerns. the three of them, sartre, crane, or confucius, were all great people who valued originality and were on the same road to seek the most effective and efficient way to make our limited life more significant, both to us and to others. finally, it will talk about the academic and practical significances of this thesis. this papers theoretical starting point is the gap between stephen cranes naturalism and the orthodox naturalism: freedom and responsibility. based on this important divergence, which is also the watershed between naturalism and existentialism, this thesis spreads the existential analysis of stephen cranes life and his works. we thereby not only have studied stephen crane from another perspective comparatively thoroughly, but also have deepened our understanding of the states of human existences, both of ourselves and of others. 对史蒂芬克莱恩生活与作品的存在主义研究 6chapter ii sartre and his existentialism the twentieth century was an eventful era, which witnessed two world wars and numerous other revolts for the sake of emancipation and freedom. undoubtedly, jean-paul sartre was an outstanding representative of such a century. as a worldwide well-known philosopher, novelist, playwright, critic, biographer and politico, sartre set a perfect example of a free man for the whole world. born in paris, 1905, sartre grew up in a relatively loose environment on account of his fathers early death. it was due to his particular childhood life without the castration of a father that sartre could live a life treasuring freedom so much. his existential philosophy and literature were based on the notion of freedom, so were his legendary private and political life. sartre never got married officially, but kept a lifetime soul marriage with simone de beauvoir, who was an almost equally famous existentialist and a feminist. meanwhile, they allowed each other to have affairs with other people. their love was a miracle even in the whole history of human beings. sartre didnt want to be confined in the trap of traditional marriage. he would not like to give up any form of freedom. in 1964, sartre was awarded the nobel prize for literature, but he immediately declined it. he was afraid of being restricted by any official forces. he just wanted to be a free man. though never being a member of any governments, sartre responded and backed all righteous struggles or even revolts, including those of france, algeria, cuba, china, and vietnam. he encouraged all the people to strive for freedom, which he thought was the most basic right to human existences. sartre distinctive and noticeable life well matched his world fame in philosophy and literature. as a matter of fact, his life was his philosophy in a sense. in the following two sections, a general intr