The Uncanny, Open Secrets, and Katherine Mansfield's Modernist Legacy in Alice Munro's Everyday Gothic

艾莉絲‧孟若日常志異中的陌異感、公開的祕密及凱瑟琳‧曼斯菲爾德的現代主義遺緒

Wen-Shan Shieh

《Tamkang Review》 48卷1期 (2017/12) Pp. 47-69

https://doi.org/10.6184/TKR201712-3

摘要

Alice Munro has sometimes been labeled as a realist, but her contribution to what I call the ＂everyday Gothic＂ and her acknowledged debt to the modernist narrative strategies have been largely overlooked. Drawing on John Paul Riquelme's insights into the link between the Gothic and modernism and Ben Highmore's reflection on the everyday, this essay argues that Munro is a Gothic modernist who deploys such narrative strategies as open-endedness of the plot, the splitting of the self, and temporal prolepsis to defy normative expectations about the linearity of the plot, the coherence and intelligibility of the self, and progressive temporality to produce the uncanny reading effects of her everyday Gothic. This argument is made through analysis of Munro's short stories and her comments on writing in relation to those of Katherine Mansfield. Munro and Mansfield are linked together because of their readiness to use innovative narrative strategies to expose the everyday life as possibly traumatic, thereby giving their stories a distinctive gothic undertone. Thus, the first part of this essay investigates how Munro was influenced by Mansfield in her use of modernist strategies of defamiliarization and divided self to expose the terrifying motifs hidden beneath the banality of everyday life. Those motifs fascinated Mansfield and include the uncanniness of social snobbery and self-estrangement. In the second part, the author examines how Munro deploys the concept of ＂open secrets＂ to disclose the closed mindset of the townspeople and subverts Mansfield's modernist emphasis on ＂the present moment＂ by installing instances of prolepsis in her later stories such as ＂Open Secrets＂ (1994) and ＂Jakarta＂ (1998). The conclusion of this essay claims that what is Gothic about Munro's stories is not so much the risk hidden in the unknown future and places as the sense of horror evoked by the mimetic uncanny in the hollowness of everyday lives.

關鍵字

the everyday ； the uncanny ； modernist ； Gothic ； secrets ； Katherine Mansfield ； Alice Munro

並列摘要

艾莉絲．孟若常被定位為寫實主義者，然而她對筆者稱之為「日常志異」此一文類的貢獻卻時被忽略。援引約翰．保羅．瑞克爾姆對志異文類與現代主義之間關係的洞見及班．海莫對日常的思考，本文主張孟若是一位志異現代主義者，她運用敘事策略如情節的開放、自我的分裂和預期描寫法，挑戰讀者對情節的線性、自我的一致性與漸進時間的慣常期待，進而營造其「日常志異」的陌異閱讀效果。此論點的形成是透過分析比較孟若與凱瑟琳．曼斯菲爾德的短篇小說及兩者對寫作的看法。孟若與曼斯菲爾德作品的連結在於兩者皆採用創新的敘事策略揭發日常生活中的恐怖，從而賦予她們短篇小說一種獨特的志異況味。本文第一部分探究孟若如何受到曼斯菲爾德的影響，運用現代主義陌生化與分裂自我的策略揭露隱藏在日常生活平庸下的恐怖主題。曼斯菲爾德的短篇小說亦處理這些主題，包括社會勢利與自我疏離所引發的陌異感。本文第二部分探討孟若如何採用其「公開的祕密」概念，透露小鎮居民封閉的思維模式。此外，孟若亦在其後期短篇故事，例如〈公開的祕密〉（1994）和〈雅加達〉（1998）中採用預期描寫法，改寫了曼斯菲爾德現代主義式對「當下時刻」的重視。本文結論主張孟若短篇小說的志異性與其說是來自隱藏在未知未來與地方中的危機，不如說是源自空洞日常生活中的陌異感所引發的恐怖。

並列關鍵字

日常 ； 陌異感 ； 現代主義 ； 志異 ； 祕密 ； 凱瑟琳．曼斯菲爾德 ； 艾莉絲．孟若

參考文獻

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Staines, David(ed.)(2016).The Cambridge Companion to Alice Munro.Cambridge:Cambridge UP.

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Boyce, Pleuke,Smith, Ron(1995).A National Treasure: Interview with Alice Munro.Meanjin.54(2)