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Literary Regionalism and the Confinements of Class: A Revisionist Historical Reading of Jessie Fauset's Plum Bun

文學地域主義與階級的限制:佛塞特《葡萄乾麵包》的修正歷史解讀

摘要


佛塞特(Jessie Fauset)1929年的小說《葡萄乾麵包》從來沒有像她同時的哈林文藝復興的作家-麥凱(Claude McKay),赫斯頓(Zora Neale Hurston),休斯(Lanston Hughes)-所達到的大好大壞的地步。事實上這本小說有時還受到非裔美國文學批評的主要聲音如波恩(Robert Bone)及克莉絲汀(Barbara Christian)的嘲諷。佛塞特使用的冒充白人的情節一直被批評家認為過於濫情,無法代表廣大非裔美國人的經驗,因為只有非常少數的非裔美國人能夠冒充白人。但是近二十年來有幾個原因使該小說受到比較正面的處理,例如對非裔美國女性小說的興趣(包含批評家對婚姻情節重新引起的興趣),及晚近批判性種族研究的影響,這些研究使任何特定觀點足以真正「代表」非裔美國經驗的假設更為複雜。本文強調該小說作為文學地域主義作品之有力特性,為該文本日益增加之批評再添加新的觀點。小說之原背景設於賓州費城一個中產階級、非裔美國人的獨立社群中,這種背景為那種環境裡種族及階級的區隔提供了有深刻見解的歷史處理方式。因為主角安吉拉莫瑞在1920年代時,從歷史上說來是費城黑人中產階級的社區搬到格林威治村的波斯米亞的、受藝術影響的文化區,讀者獲得了在新女性時代有關種族與階級互動的額外洞察力。本文指出地域主義在非裔美國文學史上出現的時間晚於主流美國文學,而該小說對於地域主義的處理說明了在法定隔離的年代裡種族認同的不穩定性。

並列摘要


Jessie Fauset's 1929 novel Plum Bun has never achieved the level of notoriety and critical acclaim of major novels by her Harlem Renaissance colleagues such as Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. In fact, the novel has been derided at times by major voices in African American literary criticism such as Robert Bone and Barbara Christian. Fauset's use of a passing plot has been judged by some critics to be overly sentimental and unrepresentative of wider African American experiences, given the assumption that relatively few African Americans have the capability to pass for white. However, the novel has been treated more positively in the last two decades for several reasons, such as an increased interest in African American women's fiction (including renewed critical appreciation of marriage plots), and the recent influence of critical race studies, which complicates the assumption that any specific standpoint can genuinely ”represent” African American experience. This essay adds a new perspective to the growing body of criticism on the text by highlighting the novel's compelling qualities as a work of literary regionalism. The novel's initial setting in a middle class African American enclave in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, provides an insightful historical treatment of race and class distinctions in that milieu. Because the protagonist, Angela Murray, moves from the historically black middle-class community of Philadelphia to the bohemian, fine art-inflected culture of Greenwich Village in the 1920s, additional insights about race and class interactions in the era of the New Woman are provided for the reader. This essay notes that regionalism as a literary standpoint emerged later in African American literary history than it had in mainstream American literature, and the novel's treatment of regionalism illustrates the instability of racial identity even during the era of legal segregation.

參考文獻


Baldwin, Neil(2003).Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate.New York:Public Affairs.
Barker, Deborah(2000).A esthetics and Gender in American Literature: Portraits of the Woman Artist.Lewisburg:Bucknell UP.
Bone, Robert(1965).The, Negro Novel in America.New Haven:Yale UP.
Christian, Barbara(1985).Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976.Westport, CT:Greenwood P.
Cooper, Anna Julia,Beverly Guy-Sheftall (Ed.)(1995).Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought.New York:New Press.

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