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引用次数: 0
摘要
这篇文章将科马克-麦卡锡1979年的小说《苏特里》作为一部 "蓝调 "作品进行重读,探讨苏特里与被追杀的复仇黑人艾布-琼斯之间的深厚关系,琼斯伤痕累累的身体和对迫害的雄辩叙述使苏特里将自己平实的痛苦倾诉出来。令人吃惊的是,小说的结尾,尤其是主人公担心被追捕的猎人和猎犬的最后形象,表明麦卡锡借鉴了三角洲蓝调歌手罗伯特-约翰逊(Robert Johnson)最著名的曲调 "Hellhound on My Trail"(《猎犬追踪我》),在描写这些猎犬时,苏特里通过传达约翰逊的身份(其背后是艾布-琼斯),表达了他对猎犬的恐惧。与此同时,猎犬形象地嵌入了诺克斯维尔的一个特殊群体--黑人社区,造成了毁灭性的后果,而猎犬在小说结尾处通过这种抒情性的互文出现,暗示了该社区的居民,尤其是阿布,是如何继续被白人社区的代表(如警察)追捕的。
Hellhound(s) on My Trail: Reading Cormac McCarthy's Suttree as a Blues
This essay rereads Cormac McCarthy's 1979 novel Suttree as a "blues," examining Suttree's deep relationship to the vengeful, hunted black man Ab Jones, whose scarred body and eloquently articulated narrative of persecution leads Suttree to channel his plaintive suffering. Startlingly, the conclusion of the novel, particularly the final image of the huntsman and hounds who the title character fears are chasing him, suggests that McCarthy draws on Delta bluesman Robert Johnson's most famous tune, "Hellhound on My Trail," in his evocation of these hounds and Suttree's fear of them through his channeling the identity of Johnson (behind whom looms Ab Jones). At the same time, the hounds have figuratively embayed a particular Knoxville populace—its black community—with devastating consequences and the hounds' presence through this lyrical intertext at the end of the novel suggest how that community's inhabitants, particularly Ab, continue to be hunted down by the white community's representatives such as the police.
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.