1、内 容 摘 要英籍印度作家萨尔曼拉什迪是二十世纪世界著名的作家之一，他对多元文化融合的浓厚兴趣，对“ 后殖民 ”语境的独到把握，对多样化文学传统的创造性使用，也使他成为二十世纪八十年代英国“后殖民” 小说创作的最重要的领军人物。拉什迪的不同文化背景给予他独特的透视和批评视角，他把印度和巴基斯坦的历史和现实置于一种以西方文化为主的混杂文化视角下，试图表现复杂的民族、宗教、种姓、阶级、性别和文化等问题。拉什迪的小说用带有异国情调的清新笔触，通过魔幻现实主义以及带有“后现代”文化色彩的手法，来表现和描写对西方世界来说是新奇的、陌异的生活经验，达到冲击西方固有价值观念的目的。尽管他的小说情节复杂，结构
2、松散庞大，但是他总是能够运用时空倒错、物象隐喻、人名谐音和梦幻般的呓语，将杂烩般的情节加以串接衔合。子夜诞生的孩子是拉什迪的成名之作。该小说 1981 年获得布克奖，1993 年又获得“布克奖二十五年最佳小说奖” ，该奖亦称“布克奖中奖”。论文旨在探讨在这部作品里的魔幻现实主义。Wendy Faris 为魔幻现实主义总结出了五个主要特征：不可解释的因素，现实世界的再现，对事件理解的不同所造成的迟疑，两种相对概念的交织及对传统观念的质疑。在这五个特征中，第四个和第五个是本论文的论述重点。因为在第四个特征中，除了 Wendy Faris 谈到的生与死、事实与虚构两对相对概念外，本论文认为在子夜诞生
3、的孩子里还有另外两对，即现实与梦境、个人历史和大众历史的界限的含混不清。而在“对传统观念的质疑” 这个特征中，本论文不仅增加了对所谓历史事实的挑衅， 而且是从后现代叙事的角度来阐释小说对传统的时空概念、身份意识和历史事实的颠覆。这些新特征的出现，使子夜诞生的孩子的具有浓郁的后现代色彩。循环往复及对古老信仰和民间故事的创造性借用也为这部小说渲染出魔幻的氛围。本论文主要由四部分组成：引言部分简要介绍了作者及其作品、国内外研究现状、本文研究目的和方法；第二部分是对魔幻现实主义这一文学流派的发展概述；第三部分是本论文的核心，从七个方面论述了小说子夜诞生的孩子里的魔幻现实主义特征；最后是结论本分: 拉什
4、迪的子夜诞生的孩子 是英国当代文学史界公认的魔幻现实主义扛鼎之作。关键词：拉什迪 子夜诞生的孩子 魔幻现实主义 后现代IIAbstractAnglo-Indian novelist Salman Rushdie is one of the most outstanding writers in the20th century. He has also been well acknowledged as the most important leading figure inthe postcolonial writing after 1980s, because of his enormous
5、 interest in the hybridity ofmulticultures, unique understanding of the postcolonial context, and creative adoption ofvarious cultures and traditions. Rushdies three different cultural backgrounds endow himwith a distinct perspective of criticism. He sees the history and reality of India and Pakista
6、nfrom the perspective of hybrid cultures dominated by Western culture, and tries torepresent the complicated problems such as race, religion, caste, class, gender, and culture.He uses in his work from various genres - fantasy, mythology, religion, oral tradition.With the help of magic realism and po
7、stmodernist devices, Rushdie depicts his lifeexperiences as an easterner which sounds strange and exotic to the westerners, aiming todisintegrate the existing world view of the west. Although multiplots and loose andcolossal structure characterize his works, Rushdie is always able to sew skillfully
8、thosehotchpotch together through displacing the time and space, employing metaphors, partialtone of characters names, and footless in dream.Awarded the Booker Prize in 1981 and the Booker of Bookers Prize in 1993,Midnights Children is Salman Rushdies most highly regarded work of fiction, though noth
9、is best known. The paper is composed to explore thoroughly the magic realism inMidnights Children, which brought Rushdie international fame.There are basically the five primary characteristics of magic realism in this novel: theirreducible element, strong presence of the phenomenal world, hesitation
10、 caused by thedifferent understandings of events, closeness of two realms, and challenge to the receivedideas. And my focus among the five is laid on the fourth and fifth characteristics. There aretwo more pairs of realms which are so close to each other that we can not tell one from theother comple
11、tely in the “closeness of two realms” part; and the conventional opinion abouthistorical truth is also questioned in the “challenge to received ideas” part. Whats more,another two distinct features for magic realism are added and explicated in detail then:repetition and allusion to ancient systems o
12、f belief and folklores.Therefore, four parts are included in the dissertation altogether. First is a briefintroduction to Rushdie and the novel studied, Midnights Children, current research onMidnights Children both in China and abroad, researching significance and researchingIIIplan. A developmenta
13、l description for magic realism is given in the next chapter. And thencomes the core part of the whole thesis the close and detailed examining of magicrealism in the light of seven characteristics. The conclusion that Rushdies MidnightsChildren is one of the magic realist masterpieces comes the last
14、.Key words: Rushdie; Midnights Children; magic realism; postmodernIV三峡大学学位论文原创性声明本人郑重声明：所呈交的学位论文，是本人在导师的指导下，独立进行研究工作所取得的成果，除文中已经注明引用的内容外，本论文不含任何其他个人或集体已经发表或撰写过的作品成果。对本文的研究做出重要贡献的个人和集体均已在文中以明确方式标明，本人完全意识到本声明的法律后果由本人承担。学位论文作者签名：I日 期：1. IntroductionSalman Rushdie, an Anglo-Indian novelist, was born in
15、Bombay, India, to amiddle-class Moslem family. His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father aCambridge-educated businessman. At the age of fourteen Rushdie was sent to RugbySchool in England. In 1964 Rushdies parents moved to Karachi, Pakistan. Rushdiecontinued his studies at Kings Coll
16、ege, Cambridge, where he read history. Aftergraduating in 1968 he worked for a time in television in Pakistan. He was an actor in atheatre group at the Oval House in Kennington and from 1971 to 1981 he workedintermittently as a freelance advertising copywriter for Ogilvy and Mather and CharlesBarker
17、. His literary career as a novelist starts with his first novel Grimus in 1975, which isan exercise in fantastical science fiction. His next novel Midnights Children (1981) wonthe Booker Prize and brought him international fame. Shame (1983), in Rushdies ownwords, is a book about Pakistan, which use
18、s a well-to-do Pakistani family history as ametaphor for the country. His fourth novel The Satanic Verses (1988) won for him theWhitbread Award of that year, and also brought him the fatal disaster the death fatwaissued by the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February14
19、,1989. Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) is written for children, and wove into thestory an affable robot, genies, talking fish, dark villains, and an Arabian princess in need ofsaving. In East, West (1994), Rushdie gives us nine stories that reveal the oceanic distancesand the unexpected intimac
20、ies between East and West, from rickshaw drivers to occultists,Christopher Columbus to Hamlets court jester. The Moors Last Sigh (1995) focuses oncontemporary India, and explored those activities, directed at Indian Muslims and lowercastes, of right-wing Hindu terrorists. The Ground Beneath Her Feet
21、 (1999) is set in theworld of hedonistic rock stars, a mixture of mythology and elements from the repertoire ofscience fiction. Fury (2001) is a work of explosive energy, at once a pitiless andpitch-black comedy, a profoundly disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature,and a love story
22、of mesmerizing force. It is also an astonishing portrait of New York City.Rushdies four latest novels are The Enchantress Of Florence (2004), a fantasia, set at the turnof the 15th and 16th centuries; Careless Masters (2005, 9); Shalimar the Clown (2005, 10), apowerful love story, intensely politica
23、l and historically informed, a dazzling novel thatbrings together the fiercest passions of the heart and the gravest conflicts of our time intoan astonishingly powerful, all-encompassing story; and Parallelville (2006, 10). His1non-fiction works include: The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey (1987)
24、, a travel diaryof Rushdies visit to Nicaragua in 1986; Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism(1991), Wizard of Oz (1992), a children film; The Rushdie Letters: Freedom to Speak,Freedom to Write (1993); Conversations with Salman Rushdie (2000); Step Across ThisLine (2002), a collection of non-fic
25、tion from 1992-2002.Midnights Children was honored special Booker Prize and was judged the bestBritish novel of the past quarter-century. Being an allegorical novel by Salman Rushdie,published in 1981, Midnights Children is a historical chronicle of modern India centeringon the inextricably linked f
26、ates of two children born within the first hour of independencefrom Great Britain. 1,001 children were born in the first hour of Indian independence, Aug.15, 1947. Two of these babies are born in the same Bombay nursing home on the stroke ofmidnight. Shortly after their birth, they are switched by a
27、 nurse, Mary, who bears bitterhatred to the rich for his boyfriends sake. Saleem Sinai, who will be raised by a well-to-doMuslim couple, is actually the illegitimate son of a low-caste Hindu woman and adeparting British colonist. Shiva, the son of the Muslim couple, is given to a poor Hindustreet pe
28、rformer whose unfaithful wife has died. Saleem, the narrator, represents modernIndia. When he is 30, he writes his memoir, Midnights Children. Shiva is destined to beSaleems enemy as well as Indias most honored war hero. This multilayered novel placesSaleem in every significant event that occurred o
29、n the Indian subcontinent in the 30 yearsafter independence.It is widely acknowledged that the publication of Midnights Children in 1981 was thereal starting point of Rushdies literary reputation. Book-length studies and academicessays contributing to his works have begun to come out since the 1980s
30、. There wereessays that surveyed the treatment of familiar themes such as history, gender, and culturalhybridity in the book, and there were those that explored the books dialogic language anduse of various postmodernism devices.By the end of last century, more than 60 dissertations have been devote
31、d at least inpart to Rushdie, most of which are comparative studies dealing with Rushdie and otherwriters, with readings of Rushdie in conjunction with James Joyce being especially popular.Timothy Brennans Salman Rushdie and the Third World (1989) which was developed outof his dissertation in 1987 d
32、eals with the social influence and effects of Rushdies works asthe book title indicates. James Harrisons Salman Rushdie (1992) is a biographical study aboutRushdies life and work. Catherine Cundys Salman Rushdie (1996) gives us an overview2of his works from the mindscape of postcolonial hybrid issue
33、s such as race, religion, nation,identity, hybridization, subversion. Jaina Sanga in 2001 studied in her book SalmanRushdies Postcolonial Metaphors: Migration, Translation, Hybridity, Blasphemy, andGlobalization how Rushdie, as a postcolonial writer, had reworked and reimaginedcolonial metaphors in
34、his works. The volume looks at the overarching metaphors ofmigration, translation, hybridity, blasphemy, and globalization in six of Rushdies works:Midnights Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, TheMoors Last Sigh, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet. Harold Bloom examined
35、 in 2003 inSalman Rushdie (Blooms Modern Critical Views) the major works of Salman Rushdiethrough full-length critical essays by expert literary critics.The scholarly commentaries devoted specifically to Midnights Children can bedivided into the following categories: the attempts to comment on his l
36、anguage (Gorra,1999), his innovation of narrative technique (Banerjee, 1992), his religious belief (Levy,1993), and to interpret it as a bildungsroman (Juraga, 1999；Blache); the essays dealingwith the conventional themes such as history (Merivale, 1995), feminism (Hai, 1999),politics and culture (Br
37、ennan, 1989); and those that explore the use of various literarydevices with typical postmodernism (Ghosh, 1999) and postcolonialism (Slemon, 1995)features, such as uncertainty and ambiguity(Shepherd, 1992), historiography (Reder, 1999),and magic realism (Parameswaran, 1983; Kakutani; Stewart; James
38、, 2001). I will focus myattention here on some research achievements relating to my papers conclusion, which areessays that survey the treatment of narration and magic realism in the text.However, due to limit access to Rushdies original works and lack of translationversions of Rushdie in China, res
39、earch on Rushdie falls many years behind the overseas,yet much less theoretical, systematical and prosperous. Few critics have ever laid theirhands on Rushdie, although Rushdies fame as one of the greatest writers in our time hasfilled their ears. Therefore, researches on Rushdie and his works show
40、up quite late in thelast few years of last century, and are not systematically conducted, but rather sporadic andwithout theoretical profundity. The common viewpoints for domestic critics to develop areRushdies religious view (Wei Jianguo, 2002), his identity of cultural hybrid and as anexpatriate (
41、Du Xinyuan, 2003; Shi Anbin, 2004), the tragic characters living in his works(Wei Jianguo, 2001), the collision between the ideas exhaled from his works and thecivilization led by American and European countries (Ruan Wei), or some generalintroduction on Rushdie and his newly-shot fictions (Xiong Zh
42、aohui, 1996; Chen Fengyan,32003; Si Kongcao, 2002 ), or comparative study on Rushdie and other writers (SiKongzao, 1999), etc. which are of skin depth. There are some critics touching upon themagic realism and postcolonialism (Qu Shijing, 1999; Wei Jianguo, 2002; Ren Yiming,2003; Zhang Helong, 2004;
43、 Yin Xinan, 2004), but usually the general introduction toRushdies life and works takes up the most proportion of these articles, which leads to lessfocus on what matters most. It consequently shows us the inability of those critics to carryout further study on Rushdie in real academic sense. What t
44、hey have done is to build asimple connection between Rushdies works and the two often-adopted theories, ratherthan elaborate theory analysis or try to look into it from new perspectives.As a successful representative of magic realism and postmodernism writing,Midnights Children will be analyzed as t
45、he studying object. The magic realism will beillustrated elaborately form seven aspects after a brief developmental introduction to theliterary style magic realism.The first five characteristics, which contain irreducible element, strong presence ofthe phenomenal world, hesitation caused by differen
46、t understandings of events, closenessof two realms and challenge to received ideas, are borrowed form Wendy Faris, but withsome creational supplements. For the “closeness of two realms” part, not only two morepairs of worlds, which are the worlds of reality and dream, worlds of personal and publichi
47、story, are added, the argumentation that the boundary between “worlds of fact andfiction” will be expounded through post-modernist narrative theory. In the same way, forthe “challenge to received ideas” part, challenge to the “idea about historical truth” will beproposed initially except for the two
48、 challenged categories of idea Faris has recognized;and post-modernist narrative theory is going to be applied to clarify all the standpoints inthis part. Therefore, the thesis for exploring the magic realism in Midnights Children willnever be a descriptive work as those of the precursors have made,
49、 instead it is endowedwith theoretical profundity and persuasion.The last two characteristics are repetition and reference to ancient systems of beliefand folklores, which have made their due contributions to the magic realist color of thenovel.42. Magic Realism as a Literary StyleMost commentators agree that magic realism originated with the German art criticFranz Roh, who in 1925 coined the word to describe a new post-expressionistic form thatwas emerging. Essentially the art described as “magic realism” was realist butsimulta
