頁籤選單縮合
題名 | Telling His Story Responsibly: The Making of a Peaceful Future in Graham Swift's Waterland= |
---|---|
作者 | 許綬南; Hsu, Shou-nan; |
期刊 | 小說與戲劇 |
出版日期 | 20081200 |
卷期 | 19:1 2008.12[民97.12] |
頁次 | 頁25-43 |
分類號 | 873.57 |
語文 | eng |
關鍵詞 | Levinas; The other; Curiosity; Peace; Messianic time; |
英文摘要 | While most criticisms on Graham Swift's Waterland treat his views on the end of history, this paper illuminates his views on the possibility of going beyond the repetition of violence that leads directly to the cyclical human history of false progress and regress. Emmanuel Levinas's views on ethics form the theoretical framework of this study. By foregrounding the difference between the responsible narrator and his irresponsible narrated self, this paper shows how the narrator, a history teacher, takes responsibility for his students who are haunted by the impending nuclear holocaust and therefore distrust education. He narrates a violent familial past in class in defiance of his professional superior so that his students, or "children," learn to grasp the source of violence and the ever-present necessity of being responsible for the Other. This self-sacrifice for his students further embodies for them a Levinasian way of making peace. The narrator's story contains negative examples of irresponsible behaviors resulting from totalizing curiosity. These examples demonstrate how such curiosity reduces the unknowable Others to the representable and leads to violence among people. Yet these negative examples also indicate the possibility for constant responsible action to produce an ever new world of peace. With responsible action from the narrator's most rebellious student resonating with the narrator's, Swift affirms the feasibility of his peace solution for the age and urges his readers to take up their responsibilities for the Others as well. In the conclusion part, this paper gives a short explanation on the narrator's sophistication. Finally, there is an optimistic appraisal of Swift's peace solution. |
本系統之摘要資訊系依該期刊論文摘要之資訊為主。