過度、逾越與擴散: 對余華和冰心的哥特視閾解讀

Since the early 18th century, the Gothic has captured a broad following in fiction, poetry, film, and subcultures, and has become the most enduring cultural tradition in the West. Gothic criticism recognizes the political engagement of literary Gothicism and focuses on cultural, political, religious, social, literary and gender-related issues involved in such writing. Gothic criticism, even though entirely a Western concept, can add an important dimension to the reading of texts beyond the “small context terrorism” (Kundera) of one interpretative tradition alone. This presentation is an exercise in reading Bing Xin’s enigmatic short story “Jottings of a Madwoman” (“Fengren biji” 疯人笔记) and Yu Hua’s “Classical Love” (”Gudian aiqing 古典爱情）from the perspective of Gothic criticism. I argue that Yu Hua’s and Bing Xin’s stories reflect all the characteristics of the Gothic so as to question social and cultural conventions. Via hallucinations, delusions, and dreams, the authors create dark subtexts of trauma, illness, and repression. Read from this perspective, Bing Xin and Yu Hua demonstrate that the haunting problems of today—violence, disintegration, trauma, and void—are structural traumas that originate not only in recent history, but in the human mind.