关键词: 叙事伦理; 《在美国》; 话语权; 苏珊•桑塔格; 美国文学

Abstract:

The literary critics have been concerned with the content and narrative structures of In America. Some speak highly of its original narrative strategies, while others condemn its shallow content and too many repetitions of the historical materials. However, few of them interpret the novel by combining its content with its structure. The author of this paper notices that the novel’s narrative strategies have some tacit correspondences with the characters’ power of discourse: the third-person viewpoint reveals the realities objectively that the heroine, Maryna, is oppressed by both the man-centered discourse and the American mainstream discourse; while the letters and the diaries indicate Maryna’s requests and longing for voicing; and the direct speeches and the lines show Maryna’s freedom of speaking. So to speak, the narrative text is a carnival platform for the discourse: the oppression and the subversion of the discursive power continuously fight against each other. Sontag retells the story by rearranging its content and narrative structure to deconstruct the authority of the mainstream discourse, showing her personal thinking and concerning for the minority female’s power of discourse. This paper attempts to analyze the oppression, subversion and reconstruction of the heroine’s power of discourse by interpreting the discursive intentions embodied in so many narrative strategies through the perspective of narrative ethics , hoping to reveal Sontag’s implied ethical consciousness and appealing through the varied narrative strategies, and thus presenting her concerning on the social reality, profound humanistic feelings towards human beings and her thinking of the social orders.

Keywords: the narrative ethics; In America; the power of discourse; Susan Santag; American literature