Determinism in the Context of Social Force in American Naturalistic Novels: From Hamlin Garland to Theodore Dreiser

美國自然主義小說中的社會力與宿命觀：由哈姆林‧加蘭至西奧多‧德萊塞的作品為例

魯子青(Lewis Tzu-Ching Lu)

《高應科大人文社會科學學報》 1卷 (2004/07) Pp. 57-104

https://doi.org/10.29888/KUASJHSS.200407.0005

摘要

十九世紀末、二十世紀初，歐洲的思潮，例如達爾文、史賓賽、尼采、種族主義、與馬克斯學說開始大量被美國人吸收。他們將這些思想粗糙的應用到工商世界的脈動中。自然學派（naturalism）的小說家也起而倣效，以銳利的社會觀紀實了當時資本主義初期的社會黑暗。似乎在暗示說：雖然這些結構性的不正義是反人性的，但「自然」之所以偉大，就在於它能漠視一切的苦難而無動於衷。它縱容一切的自私與罪惡，再超然的讓人類去自食惡果。至於弱者被無情的犧牲則無須同情，因為優勝劣敗的叢林法則是社會進步的原動。就在這樣的思想架構下，自然學者們展開了他們的宿命觀。

關鍵字

宿命 ； 社會力 ； 達爾文主義 ； 資本主義 ； 叢林法則

並列摘要

Naturalism in turn-of-the-century America was varied and multiform instead of being a monolithic movement. Hamlin Garland (1860-1940) and Stephen Crane (1871-1900) first used fiction as a literary form to convey their impressionist realism, profoundly giving depth and sincerity to the naturalistic thematics. Following their footsteps, Frank Norris (1870-1902) reinforced the dimension of naturalism by adding the romantic elements with little regard to the taboo and repression in the treatment of sex. This style inadvertently intensified the effect of shock as experiment with by their predecessors. However, it was Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) and Jack London (1876-1916) who, through the introduction of the Nietzschean concept of will to power, brought the first and experimental stage of naturalism to a close. Owing to these five pioneering writers, readers were to read the more maturely developed naturalistic fictions written by novelists such as Hemingway, Farrell, and Steinbeck in the following decades. In this paper, the author conducted an intensive review on the representative works of each writer that best exemplify the vision of nature and social forces 1 in the context of literary determinism. They are mainly Garland's Main-Travelled Roads (1893), Crane's Maggie (1893), Norris's McTeague (1899) and The Octopus (1901), London's Martin Eden (1909), and Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) and The Financier (1913).

並列關鍵字

determinism ； social force ； survival ； circumstance