現代主義文學中的否定性──以阿多諾的美學論述閱讀喬伊斯之《尤利西斯》

以藝術的反叛性格以及其無可避免的政治性為創作主軸的現代主義作品在創作當時顛覆了過時的社會價值觀，並企圖藉此重新賦予其混亂與徒勞聞名的時代嶄新的意義。然而，今日以「後現代」為我們所熟知的當代社會不但「典範化」了現代主義文學作品，更將這些作品以幾近無差別的方式與其他時代作品一併放入學院中的指定閱讀書籍清單。另一方面，在日常生活中大眾文化或所謂的文化工業大量地挪用現代主義原本設計來「刺激」讀者的文學技巧，以至於現代主義原本具備的反叛性格不但逐漸被馴化，甚至變成了因循的文學慣例。因此，本篇碩士論文企圖藉由將喬伊斯的《尤里西斯》讀為批判現代性的文本，重新建構理解現代主義文學作品中反叛性格的理論基礎，以此對抗大眾文化對現代主義作品的馴化。換言之，本論文嘗試解答以下幾個無論在學院或是日常生活領域皆值得關注的問題：「在現代主義被典範化的後現代，我們還可以如何閱讀《尤里西斯》？」、「當書架上陳列著愈來愈多較《尤里西斯》更容易被『親近』的書籍，我們為何還要閱讀（以及珍視）此寫作技法極為複雜難解的現代主義史詩？」、以及「《尤里西斯》──這樣一部背景被設定在一九〇四年六月十六日的都柏林，並於一九一四年至一九二一年間寫成的文學作品──與現處二十一世紀的讀者有何關聯？」事實上，以上提出的這些問題實為挑戰廣為人所知的《尤里西斯》文本詮釋，意即《尤里西斯》為一部讚賞且重新肯定日常生活小細節的小說。在此篇碩士論文中，筆者試圖藉由梳理當代西方馬克思主義學者（包括伊格爾頓、詹明信、莫瑞提）對《尤里西斯》的迥異詮釋並提供其理論依據，將《尤里西斯》視為現實世界的「負面知識」（negative knowledge）。本論文的文獻回顧章節將試圖闡述以上三位當代西方馬克思主義學者對《尤里西斯》提出的詮釋是如何與身處「現代性」中的當代讀者更具有關聯性。儘管這些詮釋並未確切提及或是深入闡述，其理論基礎實際上都指向了阿多諾的辯證美學理論。因此，筆者於文獻回顧之後企圖重新審視現代主義誕生時的歐陸思潮、脈絡化現代主義文學作品對「神話」的迷戀、並以兩部廣泛運用�挪用西方文學傳統神話的現代主義文學作品（艾略特的《荒原》與喬伊斯的《尤里西斯》）為例，從阿多諾和霍克海默合著的《啟蒙的辯證》一書中對神話本身具有的啟蒙性格闡述，試圖重建閱讀《尤里西斯》為現實世界的「負面知識」此詮釋的立論基礎。為了使此立論更為完備，筆者亦試圖梳理阿多諾其他幾篇關於現代主義以及文學�美學理論的闡述，以及從中讀出阿多諾的美學理論與《尤里西斯》的密切關連性，以期能夠給予《尤里西斯》嶄新並與當代讀者生活密切相關的閱讀可能。

關鍵字

喬伊斯；《尤里西斯》；阿多諾；現代主義；神話；美學

並列摘要

Once conceived as something artistically (and hence politically) subversive in undermining outmoded social conventions and endowing meaning and significance to a chaotic era known for its “panorama of futility,” modernist works of art in the age of the postmodern have been canonized and incorporated into class curriculum along with works of other epochs. In daily life, mass culture (or cultural industry) greatly appropriated modernist literary techniques – originally designed for the purpose of overwhelming and stimulating its readers – to the extent that modernism became not only domesticated but also familiarized and thus “conventional.” Set against the prevalent appropriation and domestication of modernist works of art through mass culture, this master thesis aims to retrieve the subversive-ness of modernism that was originally conceived as constitutive of its stringent critique of reality in the hope that modernist literary works of art – James Joyce’s Ulysses, in this case – can still provide us with incentive for thinking otherwise. This thesis, in other words, aims to provide tentative answers to several questions that are of the central concerns of both academies and everyday life: how can we read Ulysses when this modernist masterpiece has been canonized and its subversive potential tamed in the postmodern; why should we still read and cherish this complicated modernist literary work of art when there are something much easier for us to “consume;” and, finally, is Ulysses – set in June 16 1904 and written roughly between 1914 and 1921 – already a relic of the past or still relevant to our life in the twenty-first century and far from Dublin or Paris-Trieste-Zurich? These questions, in effect, are intentionally set to challenge the general acknowledgment that Joyce’s Ulysses is a novel that celebrates and reaffirms the value of everyday life, a reading that provides nothing particularly new to every generation. Instead, as I will argue, Joyce’s Ulysses should be read as a “negative” knowledge of reality, which is rather a polemical interpretative perspective shared by contemporary Western Marxist scholars such as Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Franco Moretti. As my literature review will show, the scholarly efforts of these Western Marxists make Ulysses more relevant to the reader in the twenty-first century, while their argumentations all point to the dialectical aesthetics of Theodor W. Adorno without specific theoretical elaboration of it. The second half of this master thesis, therefore, aims to establish a theoretical framework of reading Ulysses as a dialectically negative knowledge by re-contextualizing modernism and its mythical turn as well as reading its various deployments of myth with Adorno and Horkheimer’s famous Dialectic of Enlightenment. For the purpose of articulating this argument more clearly, I will then provide a closer reading of various pieces of Adorno’s writing on aesthetics, in which the importance of a dialectic between literary form and content is emphasized for literary works of art to remain artistically truthful while an aesthetic affinity between this Frankfurt critical thinker and James Joyce’s Ulysses manifests itself all the more clearer.

並列關鍵字

Joyce ； Ulysses ； Adorno ； Modernism ； Myth ； Aesthetics

參考文獻

Joughin, John J., and Simon Malpas, eds. The New Aestheticism. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004. Print.

---. Ulysses. 1980. Rev. ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1987. Print.

Adorno, Theodor W. Aesthetic Theory. 1970. Trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London: Continuum, 2004. Print.

Adorno, Theodor W. and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford UP. 2002. Print.

Jarvis, Simon. Theodor W. Adorno: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory. London: Routledge, 2007. Print.

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現代主義文學中的否定性──以阿多諾的美學論述閱讀喬伊斯之《尤利西斯》

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