馬修 • 路易士小說《僧侶》中的門

Abstract

門是一個日常生活中屢見不鮮的物品，人們常將它的存在視為理所當然，無需特別重視。這也許正是為什麼，雖然馬修•路易士的志異小說《僧侶》中有許許多多對門的描述，但幾乎沒有志異小說學者仔細地評論這些描述，並解釋門在此小說中所扮演的角色。本論文希冀能填補此空白。\n\n本論文第一章探討門、界線與控制間的關係。援引小說中的家門與教堂的門作例子，本章亦分析善意保護與嚴苛控制間的對話。馬克•麥道夫指出志異小說當中裡外空間的對立。本論文第二章試圖修正此二元對立的觀點。藉由小說中對開門與關門的描述，我們可以窺見路易士如何模糊裡與外的界線。在《僧侶》中，門是開與關，出與入的選擇所聚焦的地方。第三章分析路易士如何透過這些備具爭議性的選擇來探究兩性互動與自主的議題。

A door is a common object in daily life, so much so that its significance is not immediately obvious to us. This probably explains why, as far as I know, no scholars of Gothic fiction have ever scrutinised the role doors play in Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, even though this novel obsessively draws readers’ attention to them. This dissertation seeks to rectify this critical oversight and to explain why we need to pay attention to doors in The Monk.\n\nThe first chapter of this dissertation explores the issues of boundaries and control that the existence of a door necessarily brings about. I use the examples of Elvira’s door and the door of the church of Capuchins to show how protection can shade into tyranny. Chapter two tries to revise Mark Madoff’s view that spaces in Gothic novels tend to fall into two distinct categories: the inside and the outside. Examining the acts of opening and closing doors in The Monk, I show how the strict spatial dichotomy that Madoff proposes does not stand in Lewis’s text. Chapter three asks what happens when the decisions to open/close and to leave/enter a door become controversial. I argue that in The Monk, these controversial decisions are often complicated further by the power struggle between men and women. The drama of gender dynamics and self-determination depend largely on doors.