Muckraking the Gilded Age: Starting from Mark Twain's Short Stories

“鍍金”其外，“扒糞”其中：由馬克吐溫短篇小說談起

羅宜柔(Yi-Jou Lo)

《立德學報》 6卷1期 (2008/12) Pp. 59-68

https://doi.org/10.7080/JLU.200812.0059

摘要

不論「鍍金時代」(Gilded Age)或是「扒糞運動」(Muckraking Movement)均是美國十九世紀後的特殊社會特色。「鍍金」時代是爲南北戰後，美國經濟迅速攀爬，但造成「金玉其外，敗絮其中」之嘆，此時引發另類扒真文學運動，該類文學表面看來似今八卦報紙與週刊，但從另一觀點看來，亦可現爲是針對鍍金年代無以爲根之反動。
馬克吐溫與華納曾在一八七三年合著小說《鍍金年代》，可見幽默大師對當代精神食糧缺乏之擔憂。本論文旨在針對馬克吐溫多篇短篇故事，透過其中各不同人物（諸多市井小民，甚至包含鬼魂再現筆）之口述，以類扒糞口吻，娓娓道出鍍金年代，道德淪喪，貧富差距之實況。意即透過文學文本與歷史互文(intertextuality)解讀美國十九世紀特有之文化。

關鍵字

鍍金 ； 扒糞 ； 馬克吐溫 ； 十九世紀後期美國文學與文化

並列摘要

Both the Gilded Age and Muckraking Movement manifest the aura of America in the nineteenth century. The Gilded Age designates a society with a sugar coat outside and yet deterioration and maggots inside while Muckraking Movement intends to dig out the internal corrosion.
In 1873, Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warne co-composed The Gilded Age-the Tale of Two Days to disclose his worries of the spiritual meagerness in his contemporary society. This paper, thus, aims at the representation of the Gilded Age in terms of the semi-muckraking exposition in Mark Twain's short stories to demonstrate the morality downfall and the poverty predicament in this special fin de siecle and furthermore, to interpret the social, cultural, racial and even political ambience of the late nineteenth century in America.

並列關鍵字

Gilded Age ； Muckraking ； Mark Twain ； American Literature and Culture in the Late Nineteenth Century