“怪诞”食物与“异化”主体——《伤心咖啡馆之歌》中的身份困境  

“Grotesque” Food and “Alienated” Subjectivity: Identity Dilemma in The Ballad of the Sad Café

作　　者：陈惠卿 肖明文 Huiqing Chen;Mingwen Xiao(School of Foreign Languages,Sun Yat-sen University,Guangzhou,Guangdong,China)

机构地区：[1]中山大学外国语学院,广东广州510275

出　　处：《外国语言与文化》2022年第4期20-29,共10页Foreign Languages and Cultures

基　　金：教育部人文社科基金项目“19世纪美国小说中的饮食书写与国家想象研究”(21YJC752019);广东省社科规划2022年度外语专项“狄更斯作品中的饮食病理学与身体政治观研究”(GD22WZX01-02)。

摘　　要：《伤心咖啡馆之歌》是卡森·麦卡勒斯的哥特式代表作之一,书中塑造了典型的“麦卡勒斯式”边缘人物。艾米莉亚小姐、驼背李蒙和作为群像呈现的穷白人都不同程度地挣扎于幻想与现实的身份撕裂之中,他们企图通过饮食操演来重塑自己的性别身份、心理身份和阶层身份,但其饮食嗜好却暴露出各自的身份底色:外强中干的食肉者、嗜甜如命的“幼儿”、耽于酒精的狂欢者。本文借助饮食批评的视角,详细阐发小说人物的饮食行为与身份建构之间的交织关系,认为小说人物的“怪诞”饮食映射了他们的“异化”主体,麦卡勒斯通过具身化他们的饮食活动中暗含的各种矛盾,揭示其身份建构失败和幻想破灭的根源,进而引导读者反思现代社会规制下的身份困境并探寻化解之道。Carson McCullers’ s gothic masterpiece The Ballad of the Sad Café portrays typical McCullers’ marginalized characters. Miss Amelia, the hunchback Lymon, and the poor whites in the town, struggle against the distortion between fantasy and their real identities. The characters attempt to reshape their biological, psychological and social identities via culinary performances, but their eating habits expose their true colors: an outwardly strong but inwardly weak meat-eater, a sweetnessaddicted “child”, and alcohol-indulged revelers. Employing culinary criticism, this essay reveals the intertwinement between the characters’ gastronomical behaviors and their identity construction. This paper argues that the characters’ “grotesque” diets mirrors their “alienated” subjectivity. Through the concrete representations of the implied contradiction in the characters’ eating habits, McCullers discloses the root causes of their failure to construct identity and further guides readers to reflect upon the identity dilemma and its solution under the institutionalization of modern society.

关 键 词：卡森·麦卡勒斯 《伤心咖啡馆之歌》 美国南方文学 饮食批评 身份建构 

分 类 号：I712[文学—其他各国文学]