Gender and Empire Reconsidered: Menippean Satire in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus

再思性別與帝國：安潔拉‧卡特《馬戲團之夜》中之曼氏諷刺

蕭碧莉(Pi-Li Hsiao)

《小說與戲劇》 23卷2期 (2014/06) Pp. 53-76

https://doi.org/10.6271/fd.2014.23.2.03

摘要

本文嘗試以曼氏諷刺之角度，探討安潔拉．卡特在《馬戲團之夜》中對於性別與帝國的嘲弄。小說以1899年為背景，馬戲團中著名的空中飛人飛飛，以十九世紀末崛起的新女性為本，卡特藉由飛飛與她的世紀末前輩唱和，大力嘲諷十九世紀的婦女規範與常規公理。然而，卡特的主要目標是她當下身處的英國，亦即一九八零年代的英國。戰後的英國經歷帝國的頹敗，文化的失落，又受到跨國資本主義的威脅。飛飛的性別因怪誕與魅力的結合而神秘難測，卡特藉此探討女性如何建構而成。借助馬戲團跨越洲際旅程中誇張的劇情，卡特質疑性別二元論及帝國性別化。馬戲團裡充滿噪音、歡樂、與不可控制的活動，是個嘉年華式的自由場域及反抗場域，因此本文主張以巴赫汀的曼氏諷刺理論來詮釋這本小說。作為嘉年華式世界觀的產物，曼氏諷刺打破史詩般單一而權威的論述，頌揚對話性與眾聲喧嘩。本文藉由曼氏諷刺的特質，來探究卡特對性別與帝國的另類觀點，進而了解卡特如何質疑當代英國的文化與政治假設。由巴赫汀的角度觀之，馬戲團之旅一方面鬆動性別二元論，另一方面嘲弄雄性化的帝國力量。討論包含三小節：哲學觀的試煉、上下錯置的世界、性別諧擬與帝國諧擬。

關鍵字

安潔拉．卡特 ； 《馬戲團之夜》 ； 曼氏諷刺 ； 性別 ； 帝國

並列摘要

Employing a Menippean approach, this paper attempts to address Angela Carter’s satire of gender and empire in ＂Nights at the Circus＂ (1984). Set in 1899, ＂Nights at the Circus＂ depicts the emergence of the New Woman at the fin de siècle through the representation of Fevvers, a celebrated aerialiste performing in a traveling circus. Echoing her fin de siècle predecessors, Carter employs Fevvers to make fun of the nineteenth-century code of femininity and to ridicule the establishment of normalcy and legitimacy. However, the prime target of Carter’s radical critique is Britain in the 1980s. Post-war Britain saw the decline of an imperialist country, the loss of its cultural glory, and the threat of international capitalism. By mystifying Fevvers’s gender through the combination of grotesqueness and charm, Carter explores what constructs a woman. By depicting exaggerated scenarios during a cross-continental circus tour, she challenges both gender dichotomy and empire as a gendered undertaking. Since the circus is a place full of noise, entertainment, and unrestrained activity, a site of carnivalesque freedom and rebellion, I argue that ＂Nights at the Circus＂ can be interpreted in terms of Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of Menippean satire. As a product of the carnival sense of the world, Menippean satire disrupts the unitary, authoritative discourse of the epic in favor of dialogicality and heteroglossia. I explore Carter’s alternative view of gender and empire through Menippean features in order to discover how Carter questions the cultural and political assumptions of her contemporary Britain. Judging from Bakhtin’s perspective, the circus tour destabilizes the gender dichotomy on the one hand while mocking the masculinized imperial power on the other. My discussion consists of three sections: the test of philosophical ideas, the reversal and the upside down world, and the parody of gender and empire.

並列關鍵字

Angela Carter ； Nights at the Circus ； Menippean satire ； gender ； empire

參考文獻

Bakhtin, Mikhail M.,Emerson, Caryl(Ed. trans.)(1984).Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics.Minneapolis:U of Minnesota P.

Bakhtin, Mikhail M.,Iswolsky, Hélène(Trans.)(1984).Rabelais and His World.Bloomington:Indiana UP.

Weitz, Rose(Ed.)(1998).The Politics of Women's Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior.New York:Oxford UP.

Boehm, Beth A.(1995).Feminist Metafiction and Androcentric Reading Strategies: Angela Carter's Reconstructed Reader in Nights at the Circus.Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction.37(1),35-49.

Butler, Judith(1990).Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.New York:Routledge.