讲座学者：美国加州州立大学奇科分校张爱平教授
报告题目： Psychic Dislocations and Textual Ambiguities:The Ethical Complexities in Faulkner’s Light in August and Morrison’s Beloved
讲座时间：2019年12月2日（周一）下午 3:50-5:30
讲座地点：浙大紫金港校区 东5-201室
内容提要：
Both Faulkner and Morrison have secured their worldwide reputation with a series of ethically complex novels, in which marginalized characters struggle desperately to cope with their psychic dislocations and fulfill their intuitive desires through seemingly unethical, and even unthinkable, actions. In these novels, what has baffled the reader most is the absence of a clear narrational or authorial intent to affirm any ethical values or deliver any ethical judgments. To invite readers, as Marshall Gregory suggests, “into specific ways of feeling, thinking, and judging” while wading through the ethical complexities in these novels, both authors rely on innovative narrative scheme, strategic ambiguities, and metaphorical implications only to offer some sporadic and limited guidance to our ethical contemplation without revealing their own opinion.
Morrison once stated, “What is exciting about American literature is that business of how writers say things under, beneath, and around their stories. … Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom! spends the entire book tracing race and you can’t find it. … hard it is to withhold that kind of information but hinting, pointing all of the time? So the structure is the argument.” By examining and comparing Faulkner’s Light in August and Morrison’s Beloved, this lecture attempts to show how, through various textual ambiguities and multiple narrative perspectives on individuals caught in unexpected ethical dilemmas, both authors provoke and enlighten readers to discover and respond to the ethical implications, intentions, and effects of the two novels.
简介：
张爱平，复旦大学外文系毕业，哈佛大学英美文学硕士和博士。美国加州州立大学奇科分校英语系荣休教授。1993-2018在该系讲授英美文学，主持研究生项目五年，担任系主任九年。专长是美国文学史、清教主义、美国小说和族裔文学。发表专著、编著多部、学术章节和论文数十篇，最新译著有菲兹杰拉德的代表作《了不起的盖兹比》。先后50多次在国内外学术会议上作主旨演讲或宣读论文。曾担任美国人文基金会评委和多家英美出版社和期刊的专家编审，现兼任华中师大文学院特聘教授、《外国文学研究》编委和特邀英语编辑。曾应邀在美国、欧洲和中国近40所大学讲学，被多所大学聘为客座/荣誉教授。
外国文学研究所
2019年11月27日
