摘要
书信在早期现代英国有非常广泛的使用,并形成具有时代特征的书信文化.在英国文艺复兴时期戏剧中,书信不仅作为道具出现,更是时代的镜像.莎士比亚在作品中全面展现了书信这一言语媒介与戏剧艺术的完美相融,其中《李尔王》是书信出现次数最多、最为浓墨重彩的一部.剧中 8 封书信耦合 15 个主要场景,制造了情节上的悬念、突转,使故事跌宕起伏、环环相扣.这些书信巧妙联结了以国王李尔悲剧为主、大臣葛罗斯特悲剧为辅的两条并行线索,精心编织了个人与群体事件,整合了多线叙事结构,构筑了充斥真实与虚构张力的戏剧空间,展现了剧作家高超精湛的书信叙事技巧.莎翁充分利用当时英国社会广泛存在的书写字体相似性及信件在公共空间传播的不稳定特点,以书信作为核心人物书写欲望、建构主体性话语的重要物质媒介,塑造了性格鲜明的经典形象.书信从言说自我的私人文本在流通过程中转变成影响广泛的社会文本,使个人命运、家庭纽带与社会政治权力、伦理道德、性别话语紧密相联,生动再现了早期现代英国社会的真实风貌.
Abstract
As a type of written discourse with a long history,epistles were widely used in early modern England and fashioned the prominent epistolary culture.In the Renaissance drama,letters appeared not only as props,but also as mirrors of the age.William Shakespeare ingeniously demonstrates the perfect integration of epistle as the medium of discourse and stage performance.King Lear is one of the most letter-heavy in his works.There are eight letters interweaving the fifteen scenes in the play,creating suspense and plot twist and developing the story.These letters link the two parallel threads of the tragedy of King Lear and Earl of Gloucester,weave together the individual and group events,integrate multi-narrative structure,and construct a dramatic space full of real and fictional tension,demonstrating the playwright's superb epistolary narrative strategy.Based on the historical context of early modern English epistolary culture,this paper focuses on the three key letters in King Lear—Edmund's forged letter,Cordelia's secret letter and Goneril's love letter,and attempts to explore the interactive relationship between epistle's"authenticity,"mobility and self-reflection and the construction and destruction of the character's subjective discourse.It aims to reveal Shakespeare's intention to implant the"text within a text"via letters in this play.Although Edmund has been marginalized by society and his family as an illegitimate son of Earl of Gloucester,he cunningly climbs the social ladder by forging a letter.Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia,who is married to King of France,sends a secret letter to loyal Kent in England,which gradually changes from a"love test"of rescuing Lear to a declaration of war for the political struggles.As a medium of information dissemination,letters blur the boundaries between the private and the public,between family and politics.Due to the mobility and delays in the unstable and risky postal routes,Cordelia unfortunately falls into the victim of her secret and deadly letter.Goneril's love letter to Edmund testifies her passionate writing,her desperate chasing and ultimate destruction of her ambition and desires in the patriarchal society.The subversive content of her epistle and its circulation in the real and imaginary spaces show mutual construction between epistolary culture and the discourse of gender power at that time.Shakespeare not only highlights the salient features of early modern English epistolary culture that letters are easy to be forged,stolen,and intercepted,but also transforms letters from private texts as voices of individuals into potentially dangerous and influential social texts to connect personal fate and family ties closely with social and political power,ethics and morality,and gender discourse.Undoubtedly,King Lear vividly reflects the social reality of early modern England.
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