James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice: A Reappraisal

IF 0.1 4区 文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY Pub Date : 2021-06-16 DOI:10.1353/mss.2020.0014
I. Hopkins
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Abstract

IN THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH, PUBLISHED IN 1911 AND SET IN HER native Virginia where time all but stands still, Ellen Glasgow uses the voice of Abel Revercomb to verbalize what she sees as the southern malady and the blighted legacy of the Old South. Abel, the eponymous miller, observes of Old Church, and by extension of the South, that “[t]he world he moved in was peopled by a race of beings that acted under ideal laws and measured up to an impossible standard” (164). The ideal laws and impossible standards that form an inextricable part of the southern mythology center on the conception of aristocratic heritage as a staple of southern identity and police the behavior of men and women. None can escape conformity, and Glasgow’s characters’ struggles to imitate or elevate themselves to the vaunted archetype become lost causes predetermined by the very inaccessibility of the standards they wish to emulate. Although Glasgow was not immune to the “imperishable charm,” she never tired of exposing the debilitating effect of the Old South mythology on growth and progress, opining that what the South needed to reinvigorate itself was “blood and irony”—blood because it “was satisfied to exist on borrowed ideas” and irony because it is “the safest antidote to sentimental decay” (A Certain Measure 12, 28). James Branch Cabell, her contemporary and fellow Richmonder, responded to Glasgow’s call for exposing the pernicious influence of Old South sentimentalism and its stale ideal of aristocratic descent on the conception of southern identity. The result, an ambiguous and ironic novel, Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice, was published in 1919.1 It is
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詹姆斯·布兰奇·卡贝尔的《陪审团:正义的喜剧:重新评价》
在1911年出版的《旧教堂的磨坊》中,故事发生在她的家乡弗吉尼亚州,那里的时间几乎静止不动,Ellen Glasgow用Abel Revercomb的声音来表达她所认为的南方疾病和旧南方破败的遗产。阿贝尔,这位同名的磨坊主,在《旧教会》中,以及在南方的延伸中,观察到“他所生活的世界是由一个按照理想法则行事的种族组成的,他们达到了不可能的标准”(164)。理想的法律和不可能的标准构成了南方神话不可分割的一部分,它们以贵族遗产作为南方身份的主要内容,并监督男性和女性的行为为中心。没有人能逃脱从众,格拉斯哥的角色们努力模仿或提升自己成为引以为豪的原型,但由于他们想要效仿的标准很难达到,这就注定了失败。尽管格拉斯哥也不能免受“不朽的魅力”的影响,但她总是不厌其烦地揭露旧南方神话对成长和进步的削弱作用,认为南方振兴自己需要的是“血腥和讽刺”——血腥是因为它“满足于依靠借来的思想生存”,而讽刺是因为它是“消除情感衰退的最安全的解药”(《特定措施》12,28)。詹姆斯·布兰奇·卡贝尔(James Branch Cabell),她的同时代人,也是里奇蒙德(Richmonder),回应了格拉斯哥的呼吁,揭露旧南方感伤主义及其陈腐的贵族血统理想对南方身份概念的有害影响。结果,一部模棱两可、充满讽刺意味的小说《尤尔根:正义的喜剧》于1919.1年出版
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来源期刊
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY
MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY Arts and Humanities-Literature and Literary Theory
CiteScore
0.20
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0.00%
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期刊介绍: Founded in 1948, the Mississippi Quarterly is a refereed, scholarly journal dedicated to the life and culture of the American South, past and present. The journal is published quarterly by the College of Arts and Sciences of Mississippi State University.
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