{"title":"《维多利亚家庭纪事》中的反个人主义","authors":"Maia McAleavey","doi":"10.1215/00295132-8309569","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The bildungsroman privileges singularity: the unique and, often, the only child. This essay turns away from familiar literary narratives of a protagonist's personal development in order to examine the narrative possibilities of a genre that instead maintains focus on a group of siblings: the Victorian family chronicle. Family chronicles understand their large families as systems; they celebrate the replaceability of relationships rather than the irreplaceability of individuals. By insisting that a flourishing group can function in the absence of any particular person, they achieve fulfillment not in individualist plots but in group activities and brimful houses. The most influential Victorian family chronicler was Charlotte Mary Yonge. Yonge's episodic form was taken up by Anthony Trollope, Margaret Oliphant, Louisa May Alcott, and Margaret Sidney. These writers’ chronicles are non-protagonistic, nearly plotless, and potentially endless. They have been dismissed as minor works; nonetheless the anti-individualism of the large family chronicle offers an innovative approach to the nineteenth-century novel's tense negotiation between individual needs and group membership. Glimpses of chronicle narration can be seen operating within and against the competitive character systems that dominate canonical Victorian novels. A twentieth-century variant, Gilbreth and Carey's Cheaper by the Dozen, proves that the mutualistic form is also capable of hardening the boundaries around a family unit in order to compete in a capitalist marketplace. 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引用次数: 2
摘要
成长小说赋予奇点特权:独一无二的,通常是唯一的孩子。这篇文章避开了人们熟悉的关于主人公个人发展的文学叙事,以考察一种类型的叙事可能性,这种类型的叙事保持着对一群兄弟姐妹的关注:维多利亚家族编年史。家族编年史将他们的大家族理解为系统;他们赞美关系的可替代性,而不是个人的不可替代性。通过坚持一个繁荣的群体可以在没有任何特定人的情况下发挥作用,他们不是在个人主义的阴谋中实现的,而是在群体活动和丰富的房子中实现的。最有影响力的维多利亚家族编年史家是夏洛特·玛丽·永格。Yonge的情节形式由Anthony Trollope、Margaret Oliphant、Louisa May Alcott和Margaret Sidney采用。这些作家的编年史是非对抗性的,几乎没有情节,而且可能是无穷无尽的。它们被视为小工程而不予理会;尽管如此,《大家族编年史》中的反个人主义为这部19世纪小说在个人需求和群体成员之间的紧张谈判提供了一种创新的方法。编年史叙事的一瞥可以看出,它在维多利亚经典小说中占主导地位的竞争性人物体系中运作,并与之对抗。20世纪的一个变体,Gilbreth和Carey的Dozen的Cheaper,证明了互惠形式也能够强化家庭单位的边界,以便在资本主义市场中竞争。尽管如此,永革发展的家族编年史将叙事和经济资源都集中在一个系统中,而不是集中在一位奋斗者身上。
Anti-individualism in the Victorian Family Chronicle
The bildungsroman privileges singularity: the unique and, often, the only child. This essay turns away from familiar literary narratives of a protagonist's personal development in order to examine the narrative possibilities of a genre that instead maintains focus on a group of siblings: the Victorian family chronicle. Family chronicles understand their large families as systems; they celebrate the replaceability of relationships rather than the irreplaceability of individuals. By insisting that a flourishing group can function in the absence of any particular person, they achieve fulfillment not in individualist plots but in group activities and brimful houses. The most influential Victorian family chronicler was Charlotte Mary Yonge. Yonge's episodic form was taken up by Anthony Trollope, Margaret Oliphant, Louisa May Alcott, and Margaret Sidney. These writers’ chronicles are non-protagonistic, nearly plotless, and potentially endless. They have been dismissed as minor works; nonetheless the anti-individualism of the large family chronicle offers an innovative approach to the nineteenth-century novel's tense negotiation between individual needs and group membership. Glimpses of chronicle narration can be seen operating within and against the competitive character systems that dominate canonical Victorian novels. A twentieth-century variant, Gilbreth and Carey's Cheaper by the Dozen, proves that the mutualistic form is also capable of hardening the boundaries around a family unit in order to compete in a capitalist marketplace. Nonetheless, the family chronicles developed by Yonge model a social economy in which both narrative and economic resources are not concentrated on a single striver but are distributed across a system.
期刊介绍:
Widely acknowledged as the leading journal in its field, Novel publishes essays concerned with the novel"s role in engaging and shaping the world. To promote critical discourse on the novel, the journal publishes significant work on fiction and related areas of research and theory. Recent issues on the early American novel, eighteenth-century fiction, and postcolonial modernisms carry on Novel"s long-standing interest in the Anglo-American tradition.