"From a Utopia to a Dystopia" On Mark Twain's Compliance with and Deviation from Heterotopology in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court  

"From a Utopia to a Dystopia" On Mark Twain's Compliance with and Deviation from Heterotopology in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

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作  者:Billy Bin Feng Huang 

机构地区:[1]National Chengchi University, Taiwan

出  处:《Journalism and Mass Communication》2014年第9期572-584,共13页新闻与大众传媒(英文版)

摘  要:In this paper, the author intends to parallelize Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court with Foucault's theorizations about heterotopia, or heterotopology. For Foucault, heterotopia is a paradox because it is paces that are both real and placeless. Twain's novel is a time travel story, which juxtaposes the temporalities of the 6th and 19th centuries. In the story, Hank, the hero, is allowed access to Camelot, King Arthur's court. Above all, he has introduced to it quite a few elements of modem technology and civilization. So far Twain seems to have complied with Foucault's heterotopology. That is, there is a textual heterotopia created in his novel. However, the last principle of Foucault's heterotopology states that a heterotopia can be comparable to a utopia because of its contrastive function. A typical time travel story has the same contrastive function as well. That is, in either case there should be a utopia, a dystopia, or a mixture of them. However, Twain's novel fails to contrast the 6th century with the 19th century simply because the heterotopia Hank has created leaps from a utopia to a dystopia. It is at this point where Twain has deviated from heterotopology. The shifting nature of this heterotopia not only disables its contrastive mechanism but also jeopardizes its thematic clarity. Most of all, it indicates that Twain has a considerably ambivalent attitude towards the industrial civilization, and that as a consequence, he is indecisive about the direction of this novel.

关 键 词:Mark Twain Michel Foucault A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court heterotopia (-topology) UTOPIA DYSTOPIA 

分 类 号:TS264.23[轻工技术与工程—发酵工程] I207.42[轻工技术与工程—食品科学与工程]

 

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