眷戀的語言:女性、情感與小說 1778-1811

Abstract

本研究計畫檢視十八世紀末及十九世紀初兩位英國女性小說家如何書寫、爭辯與探索情感的多重向度。以十八世紀「情感文化」(the culture of sensibility) 作為論述架構，本研究將著眼於分析伯妮(Frances Burney)和雷德克里芙 (Ann Radcliffe)如何挪用與回應傳統感性敘事方法 (sensibility narratives)來發展其獨特的情感語言 (the language of feeling)。 本計畫預計分兩年完成，內容分為兩大部分。第一部分「【依芙蓮娜】中 的禮儀與記憶」探討伯妮的第一本暢銷著作究竟是否為一情感小說(a sentimental novel)，並進一步分析該文本對禮儀(manners)和記憶(memory)的重視如何影響情感的流露。第二部分「情感互惠: 雷德克里芙對劉易士(Matthew Lewis)的回應」重新省視兩位誌異小說家的競爭與對話，我將分析人與人間的距離(distance)在後者驚世之作【僧人】與在前者小說【義大利人】中的呈現有何不同，這樣的比較將可進一步回答兩位作家所共同關心的問題：親密(intimacy)代表一種肢體上的接近還是一種情感上的交流?綜合而論，本計畫將可對十八世紀情感文化的發展、女性小說家的藝術成就以及浪漫時期英國小說的研究做出貢獻。

This two-year research project investigates the fraught relationship between women, feeling and fiction in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England. It asks an important question: is there an alternative way of imagining and articulating affection in this era other than the dominant rhetoric of sensibility? This project comprises two parts. The first section, “Manners and Memory in Evelina” examines how Frances Burney’s first novel rejects, recycles and rejuvenates the conventional assumptions about feeling codified and popularized by the eighteenth-century sentimental culture. Burney’s emphasis on good manners does not indicate a resolute and thorough break from literary sentimentalism, as many critics would have us believe. I will demonstrate that Evelina is centrally concerned with how to sustain affection and create lasting connections. It therefore represents a new stage in the history of the sentimental novel. The second part, “Affective Reciprocity: Radcliffe’s Answers to Lewis’s The Monk,” reconsiders the assumed dialogue between these two famous writers of Gothic romance. I argue that the notion of distance serves very different emotional purposes in Radcliffe’s novel The Italian and Lewis’s The Monk. The latter associates distance with alienation, while the former connects it with longing. These different representations of distance and feeling, I argue, reflect their contrasting definitions of interpersonal intimacy. Designed to be deeply historical, this study will demonstrate why feeling plays a central role in understanding Romantic women novelists and in defining “the Romantic novel.”