泰瑞•普萊契的《貓鼠奇譚》與兒童文學再思

“ A Story About Stories”: Rethinking Childhood and Children’s Literature in The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

洪菀均(Woan-Jiun Horng)

指導教授 ： 古佳艷

國立臺灣大學/文學院/外國語文學研究所/碩士(2011年)

https://doi.org/10.6342/NTU.2011.01920

摘要

摘要
　　在本文當中，我的主要研究文本為泰瑞•普萊契的《貓鼠奇譚》(2001)。此書屬於動物奇幻，針對的讀者群則是兒童。普萊契是著名的幽默奇幻暢銷作家，寫作手法上則以諷刺傳統的觀念和偏見見長。《貓鼠奇譚》中，普萊契諷刺的對象為──視兒童為純真、缺乏獨立思考能力的兒童文學傳統。因此，在本論文當中，我將探討普萊契如何在《貓鼠奇譚》中批評並翻轉傳統兒童文學的三個面向。首先我會討論普萊契如何翻轉兒童動物奇幻(children's animal fantasy)中的童年形象。接著我會探討普萊契如何利用荒謬文學(nonsense literature)的手法揭露語言與文學傳統本是人為，而非自然。最後，我會闡述普萊契如何探討兒童閱讀與說故事的過程。
　　本文中，我的論述以童年研究中的「童年建構論」為據。童年建構論指出，童年並非是一個純生理階段，也不是全人類皆有、固有的。它是根據一個時代的歷史文化背景建構而成的。根據這個論點，我認為普萊契在《貓鼠奇譚》中不只批判傳統動物奇幻裡的童年建構，更將兒童這個概念重新建構，賦予其自我覺察與辨別真實和論述的能力。正因為這種重新建構後的童年概念，普萊契才能合理的在兒童文學中，以一種疏離而帶批判性的態度探討語言與文學傳統之人為性，以及兒童閱讀與說故事的過程等議題。

關鍵字

泰瑞•普萊契 ； 兒童文學 ； 童年研究 ； 動物奇幻 ； 荒謬文學 ； 閱讀 ； 說故事

並列摘要

Abstract
In this thesis, I plan to discuss Terry Pratchett’s The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001), an animal fantasy aimed at a child audience. Pratchett is a well-known writer of comic fantasy, and he has been hailed as a keen satirist. Consistent with Pratchett’s tendency to satirize established concepts and conventions, The Amazing Maurice targets the very genre it belongs to: children’s literature. Therefore, in this paper, I will examine how in the novel, Pratchett critiques and subverts of three aspects of the tradition of children’s literature: the first is Pratchett’s subversion of the representation of childhood in children’s animal fantasy, the second is Pratchett’s use of literary nonsense to reveal the artificiality of language and literary conventions in children’s literature, and the third is Pratchett’s exploration of the process of children’s reading and storytelling.
My discussions in the thesis are based on the premises of childhood studies, especially on its constructivist view of childhood. Construcvists scholars of childhood see childhood not as a biological, essential, and universal phenomenon, but as something constructed according to the historical and cultural context. With this concept in mind, I argue that Pratchett not only critiques the traditional construction of childhood in animal fantasy, but he also reconstructs children as being self-aware and capable of distinguishing between reality and the discourses people construct to structure it. Such a reconstruction of childhood allows Pratchett to justify presenting in a work of children’s literature a detached and critical view on the artificiality of language and literary conventions, as well as the process of children’s reading and storytelling.

並列關鍵字

Terry Pratchett ； children’s literature ； childhood studies ； animal fantasy ； nonsense literature ； reading ； storytelling

參考文獻

Andrew M. Butler et al. 2nd ed. Baltimore, Maryland: Old Earth, 2004. Print.

Works Cited

Anderson, Celia Catlett, and Marilyn Fain Apseloff. Nonsense Literature for Children:

Beckett, Sandra L. Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. New York:

Routledge, 2009. Print.