“结构主义先生”与奇想文学——重读茨维坦托多洛夫的《奇想:一个文学样式的结构研究》

在20世纪的西方文论史上,法国著名文学理论家茨维坦托多洛夫因其突出的贡献一度被理论界誉为"结构主义先生",其于1968年出版的《奇想——一个文学样式的结构研究》便是其早期立足结构主义诗学思想撰写的最为经典的名作。然而,新世纪伊始,托多洛夫对自己曾经积极参与其中的结构主义运动进行了全面的否定和反思。本文通过重读托多洛夫的这一早期经典之作,一方面全面梳理其对于奇想文学文类特征的描述,另一方面全面澄清托多洛夫研究奇想文学的目的。上世纪60年代末,托多洛夫通过否定和批判奇想文学努力确立其结构主义文学观念,但他在努力建构其理想中的结构主义诗学过程中突出地暴露出了自身的种种矛盾,《奇想——一个文学样式的结构研究》充分地呈现了托多洛夫就对包括文学意义等无解问题的早期自觉,重读此部经典,我们就会发现,托多洛夫对于结构主义的反思由来已久。

Mr. Structuralist and the Fantastic——Rereading The Fantastic: AStructural Approach to a Literary Genre by Tzvetan Todorov

In 1968,when Tzvetan Todorov published The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre,it quickly helped to establish both his personal reputation as Mr.Structuralist and structuralism as the way after New Criticism to deal with literature.Four decades later,Todorov retracted his earlier position through a book of disavowal and repudiation.This article advocates a rereading of the early classic not only for understanding what he thought constituted the central features of fantastic fiction but for laying bare his critical attitude towards it as a genre.Such a rereading,it is contended,would also help uncover problems that had beset all attempts at constructing a structuralist poetics and show Todorov self-consciously wrestling with them from the beginning of his theoretical career.