本书以一篇篇经典的代表性作品为具体例证,系统阐述了后现代主义在小说解构、重构、元小说、反体裁、语言游戏、戏仿、拼贴、蒙太奇、迷宫、黑色幽默、零散叙事、滑动能指、零度写作、通俗化倾向、后现代主义文学代码的语义学和句法学特点等方面的艺术特征。它将后现代主义理论探讨与小说文本分析相结合,将小说主题思想讨论和艺术风格分析相结合,全方位地把握其发展脉络和社会影响,使读者能对美国后现代主义小说有一个深刻而全面的认识。
该书可用作我国高等院校英语语言文学专业本科生和研究生“美国后现代主义小说研究”课程教材,同时亦面向高校文学院外国文学专业本科生和研究生、从事文学批评和文艺理论研究的学者,以及广大外国文学爱好者等。
Preface/ 1
Directions for Teaching/ 1
The Abbreviations of the Works' Titles/ 1
Chapter I The Aesthetic Dimensions of Postmodernist Fiction/ 1
A. The Core Concepts of Postmodemist Thought/ 1
B. The Evolvement of Fiction: Realism--Modernism Postmodernism/ 4
C. The Aesthetic Dimensions of Postmodernist Fiction/ 8
1. Metafiction/ 8
2. Anti-genre/ 18
3. Language Games and the Reader's Interpretation/ 21
4. Tendency towards Popularization/ 25
5. Parody,Collage,Montage,Black Humor,and Labyrinth/ 27
6. Language Subject,Fragmented Narrative,Shifting Signifiers,and Writing Zero/ 38
Chapter 2 The Deconstructive and Reconstructive Tendencies of Postmodernism in Snow White/ 53
A. The Deconstructive Tendency of Postmodernism/ 55
1. Indeterminacy/ 55
2. Fragmentation/ 57
3. Decanonization/ 60
4. Selflessness and Depthlessness/ 64
5. The Unpresentable and the Unrepresentable/ 70
B. The Reconstructive Tendency of Postmodernism/ 72
1. Irony/ 72
2. Hybridization/ 75
3. Carnivalization/77
4. Performance and Participation/ 79
5. Constructionism/ 81
6. Immanence/ 82
Chapter 3 The Absurd Social Reafity and the Grotesque FiCtional World in Catch-22 and Closing Time/ 90
A. The Absurd Social Reality/ 90
1. The Catch-22 in the 1960s/ 90
2. The Catch-22 in the 1990s/ 95
B. The Grotesque Fictional World/ 99
1. Black Humor/ 100
2. Language Games/ 106
3. The Tendency towards Popularization/ 112
Chapter 4 The Nonlinear Narrative,the Death of the Author,and Black Humor in Slaughterhouse-Five/ 117
A. The Combination of the Significant Theme and the Innovative Form/ 119
B. The Nonlinear Narrative/ 124
1. Combining History with Imagination/ 124
2. Combining Reality. with Fantasy/ 129
3. Combining the DiachroniC with the Simultaneous/ 133
C. The Death of the Author/138
D. Black Humor/ 146
Chapter 5 The Labyrinth Composed of Entropy,Polysemy and Indeterminacy in The Crying of Lot 49/ 152
A. Entropy/ 155
1. Demon and Oedipa/ 156
2. Entropy and the Society/ 160
3. Entropy and Information/ 164
B. Polysemy/ 170
C. Indeterminacy/ 174
Chapter 6 The Comic Nightmare and the Dishevelled Structure in Second Skin/ 182
A. The Comic Nightmare/ 184
1. The Comic Elements/ 185
2. The Nightmarish Elements/ 205
B. The Dishevelled Structure/ 211
1. The Unsymmetrical Space/ 212
2. The Discontinuous Time/ 214
3. The Blanks/ 218
C. Metafiction/ 220
Chapter 7 The Transcendental Realities and the Unusual Techniques in Pale Fire/ 227
A. The Transcendental Realities/ 229
1. The Subjective Reality/ 230
2. The Imaginative Reality/ 231
3. The Consciousness of Death/ 232
4. Solitude/ 234
5. Alienation/ 236
B. The Unusual Techniques/ 240
1. Intertextuality/ 242
2. Parody/ 251
3. A Game of Worlds/ 254
Chapter 8 The Parody of Philosophical Texts and Metafietion in The End of the Road/ 268
A. The Parody of Philosophical Texts/ 269
1. The Parody of Existentialism/ 270
2. The Parody of Freudianism/ 281
B. Metafiction/ 292
Chapter 9 The Literary Code of Postmodernism in The Public Burning/ 301
A. What Is a Literary Code?/ 302
B. The Semantic Characteristics of the Literary Code of Postmodernism/ 305
1. The Prominent and Very Frequently Used Lexemes/ 305
2. The Prominent Semantic Fields/ 306
C. The Syntactic Characteristics of the Literary Code of Postmodernism/ 311
1. The Characteristics of the Sentence Structures/ 312
2. The Characteristics of the Text Structures/ 317
Glossary/ 336
Bibliography/ 342
The Readings for the Study of American Postmodernist Fiction/ 357
Postscript/ 361