《歷程》
歷程》：世紀末倫敦的新女性與新市景
葉雅茹
國立政治大學
十九世紀末、二十世紀初的倫敦見證了商品文化的興盛與成熟，以商品文化為
中心的自由、快感與慾望流動的空間特質，經由走逛、購買與消費等各種活動錯綜交
織而成。女性進入各種公共場域的機會隨著商品消費文化日益蓬勃，無論於形式或頻
率皆豐富起來。本文企圖由理查遜的小說《歷程》，探究當時女性活動與都市公共空
間之間的互動關係。書中的主角米莉安，是一名獨自在倫敦謀生，受過相當程度的教
育卻只能從事薪資微薄工作的勞力階級女性，也就是所謂的「新女性」。然而經濟拮
据並未完全阻礙米莉安在倫敦的日常生活。米莉安以具體的方式，例如上劇院、乘坐
公車、騎腳踏車、夜間閒逛等多樣化的身體經驗，吸收與記憶倫敦都市地景，其中更
以在新興的咖啡店與茶室的用餐經驗居多。米莉安最常進入的咖啡店或茶室乃是因應
高度的商品文化消費活動而蓬勃發展的一種連鎖餐飲店，即是當時倫敦的「新市
景」。在外用餐經驗使米莉安日趨熟悉倫敦的商品文化與社會脈絡，令她逐漸感受到
倫敦生活的解放與自主性，卻也無可避免地體認到現實生活的歧視與挫折。理查遜以
米莉安的例子表現出新女性與新都市空間的相互依賴、相互滲透的緊密關係：咖啡店
與茶室此種連鎖餐飲店，不僅提供了米莉安身體物質上的滿足，其獨特的空間特質與
用餐經驗更使她得以觀察與接觸都市人群，型塑了米莉安的主體性與對倫敦的空間認
同。
pinning a Brave New World: Adrienne Rich’s “An Atlas of the Difficult World”
張郁屏 Yu-ping Chang
國立政治大學
Written in the era of the Persian Gulf War, “An Atlas of the Difficult World”
demonstrates Adrienne Rich’s portrayal of the United States in a state of severe crisis, a
world filled with difficulty, poverty, violence, oppression, and loneliness. To catch the
emergent moment of her country, Rich regards “An Atlas of the Difficult World” as a poem
which “reflects on the condition of [her] country, which [she] wrote very consciously as a
citizen poet, looking at the geography, the history, the people of [her] country” (Moyer 345).
With the change of scenes in the thirteen sections of “An Atlas of the Difficult World,” Rich
presents a multifocused and kaleidoscopic poem with “a panoramic view” (Gwiazda 165) of
American geography as well as American history crisscrossing time and space. Unlike her
earlier poems most of which put more emphasis on the questions of woman’s liberation and
gender issues, “An Atlas of the Difficult World” explores the broader scope of the divergent
poetic elements and attracts a great bulk of criticisms. Some critics, commenting on this
masterpiece of Rich, have given their analysis to its unique poetics of witness. Other critics
concentrate on the relation of poetry, poet and reader in order to discuss the important task of
the poet and the necessary involvement of the reader. Still other critics investigate the
fragmented structure of “An Atlas of the Difficult World” in terms of Rich’s challenge to the
tradition of the grand narrative and the condition of those oppressed and forgotten voices in
the history of the United States.
In this paper, I will focus my analysis on the exceptional narrative structure of “An
Atlas of the Difficult World.” First, I will make an effort to interpret the multiple meanings of
the “atlas” in the poem’s title in association with Rich’s atypical narrative of American
history as well as a poet’s duty of making witness and bearing up the world. Next, Rich’s
unique design of this poem—the thirteen separated sections—will be analyzed so as to probe
for her challenge to the conventional perception of the number thirteen which is commonly
related to bad luck and depravity. Furthermore, the “patchwork quality” (Ostriker 39) of “An
Atlas of the Difficult World” will be associated with the concept of détournement, a
distinctive artistic practice of avant-garde, in order to investigate Rich’s alternative narrative
of the American history. Last but not least, I will analyze Rich’s employment of the spider
image, an important symbolic figure in “An Atlas of the Difficult World.” The imaginary
map composed by Rich in “An Atlas of the Difficult World” out of the fragments of
memories and meditations will be compared to a spider’s web in terms of its implication of
building connection. This paper attempts to argue that the very map of a difficult world
which Adrienne Rich presents in “An Atlas of the Difficult World” is an artistic tapestry
which displays an incomplete contour of a brave new world, a site of struggle and resistance
where people are “torn / between bitterness and hope” (Rich 13.489-90) yet at the same time
looking for the possibilities of new identity, new life, and new future.
Key words: Adrienne Rich, “An Atlas of the Difficult World,” map, alternative narrative,
heteroglossia, détournement.
Virginia Woolf’s Strategy in “Street Haunting:” a Journey Transcending the Flâneur/
Flâneuse Distinction with an Enormous Eye
李佳真 Chia-chen Lee
國立政治大學
Modernity has long been considered as males’ privilege, which is manifested in their
experiences of the public sphere and city life. Their perceptual activities are illustrated by the
role of flâneur, the male stroller in the context of the modern city. Before the 20th century,
modern city is the space where women are generally excluded and made invisible. Women’s
over exposure in public space to some degree would be considered as a moral transgression.
Yet, it is also in this patriarchally defined transgression that forms the subversive power of
women towards the city space. Reflecting on flâneur’s freedom of walking and perceiving,
some contemporary critics also gender-consciously debate over the legitimate existence of
flâneuse, the correspondent female stroller in the beginning of the 20th century. Yet, should
the experiences and the features of walking be completely gender constructed by the
distinction of flâneur and flâneuse? In Woolf’s “Street Haunting,” there is an alternative
strategy for strollers which can not be encompassed by the features of either flâneur or
flâneuse. Beyond the concerns of women’s access to the public sphere or the legitimate
existence of flâneuse, Woolf in “Street Haunting” illustrates a ghost stroller who is detached
from the social bonds of gender and identity. The ghost, without the solid and stable
constituent of entity and soul, could dispel the title of flâneuse which is simply the
corresponding tag of flâneur, though some Woolf critics, like Janice Mouton, still relates
Woolf’s stroller and George Sand together and consider them as the forebears of flâneuse.
The main focus of this study is to reflect on the discourses concerning the distinction of
flâneur and flâneuse, and further argues how Woolf’s stroller in “Street Haunting” bears the
transcendental image that could deconstructs those discourses by its neutral experience of
walking. Moreover, I also intend to examine how the improvisatory ghost stroller transforms
the city spatiality. Her choice of a transparent ghost image gives all strollers the freedom to
experience the instant beauty with the “enormous eyes,” and try on diverse identities through
non-biased empathy. Thus, Woolf’s stroller with the “enormous eyes” can immerse in the full
possibilities of the life world, and the vision further changes the city landscapes. It obscures
the paths and grids in this originally biased city and “giving us the [sense of] irresponsibility
which darkness and lamplight bestow.” Comparing with the idea of “androgyny” that Woolf
proposed in another essay “A Room of One’s Own,” the stroller in “Street Haunting” is an
even more liberative version of human beings. The “enormous eyes” not only contains the
vision of men and women as an “androgynous eye,” but also involves that of the young and
old, poor and rich, normal and deformed...and so on, which is all-encompassing since its
perspective is detached from the social categories.
The other collateral focus of this study is to examine how Woolf’s strategy is significant
in searching a self after the walk, by employing Anthony Giddens’s notion of “internal
referentiality” (145). Woolf shows the readers that the London adventure is actually a process
of searching one’s own self, which is only made possible by taking a transcendental role as a
city stroller. One needs to be beaten back into a ghost stroller first, staying away from any
social categories, and then explore the possibilities of one’s identity. On the surface it seems
Woolf’s stroller is entering into the London City, a huge institution established by male
power, and is controlled by it. Yet, when we dive deeper into the details of the ghost stroller’s
experiences, it actually shows quite a certain mastery over the city through the reflexive use
of the public world—an incessant trials on different entities in London under the image of a
disembodied ghost.
The Relationship between Space and Power: Jack Gladney’s Search for Power in Don’s
DeLillo’s White Noise
呂虹瑾 Bekah Hong-jin Lu
國立政治大學
在一場論 「全景敞視主義」(panopticism) 的訪談中，米歇爾•傅科 (Michael
Foucault) 闡述建築物不僅僅有遮蔽和區隔的實用性功能，也生產出權力運作的特殊空
間，權力無法避免地與空間纏構在一起。
於「在其他地方」(“Of Other Spaces”) 一文中，傅科指出空間發展且影響人類對
日常生活的觀點，雖然目前人們居住在「異質性空間」 (heterogeneous space)中，空間
的神聖性無法簡單地被抹除掉，今日空間的去神聖性仍尚未完成。此空間的神聖性依
舊賦予身處其中的人們一股權力感。
今日，因與其他地點間有錯綜複雜的關係，人們的生活空間被複雜化，變成暗
含權力轉移的「異托邦」(heterotopias)。雖以不同面貌出現，異托邦是每個社會中所不
可或缺的一部分，並隱藏權力的神秘性於其中，傅科明確地列舉出異托邦的地點例
子，但他卻沒有對這些地點的影響力作更深一步的解說。
因此，這份研究企圖以當代美國作家唐•德里羅 (Don Delillo) 的《白噪音》
(White Noise)，作一文本與理論的交叉討論，探討異托邦空間中權力的流動性，當主角
傑克•格蘭尼(Jack Gladney) 受到「異托邦」影響的時候，他要如何顛覆權力與空間的
束縛。本文共分四部分，首先由所在的「異質性空間」角度發聲，其次探「異托邦」
特性，第三部分論「異托邦」對德里羅筆下的格蘭尼之影響，最後一部分為結論。
關鍵詞： 唐•德里羅(Don DeLillo)、「白色噪音」(White Noise)、米歇爾•傅科 (Michael
Foucault)、異托邦 (heterotopias)、異質性空間(heterogeneous space)
Sherlock Holmes in China: the Imagined Detective Space and Modernity in Fin de siècle
Shanghai
楊子樵 Yang Ziqiao
國立台灣師範大學
The first Chinese translation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories was
first published by the Shanghai-based reformist newspaper, Shi-wu Bao (時務報), in 1896.
Scholars such as Leo Ou-fan Lee have pointed out that the translated genre might have served
as a medium for the reformist elite to propagate their utilitarian agenda, circulating concepts
such as science, logic as well as other social institutions of western society. While it might be
a rather established view to treat the imported detective fiction as Chinese elite literati’s
edifying tool to modernize the nation, it seems far from satisfactory to regard the genre’s
introduction and reception simply as China’s wholehearted embrace of the western modernity.
The import of Sherlock Holmes stories and the blooming of so-called “literary
journalism” in Shanghai were closely connected, as both belonged to a broader utilitarian
enlightenment movement launched by the reformist intellectuals. Among these new literati,
Liang Qichao was the most influential one. During 1896 to 1897, Shi-wu Bao, the first
newspapers founded by him, ran the first translated Sherlock Holmes stories serialized in
twelve installments, including “The Naval Treaty,” “A Case of Identity,” “The Crooked
Men” and the “The Final Problem.” However, what is noticeable is that the editorial board
suddenly decided to stop the serialization in 1897, ending the last story with “The Final
Problem.” Eva Hung suggests that there might have been a conflict between the economic
need to cater to popular taste and the criteria embraced by the education and morality
advocates. Here, the literati’s ambivalent attitude toward the translated genre might imply a
kind of subjective tension behind their utilitarian attempt. My question goes: was the import
of the genre simply reflecting the Chinese literati’s passive embrace of the western modernity?
Could there be any other dimension that might explain this particular choice of genre in the
age of China’s modernization?
In this case, Shanghai’s urban space comes into my focus. The fact that Sherlock
Holmes was the product of the highly industrialized London encoded with the mindset of the
late Victorian bourgeois directs my attention to the Chinese city, Shanghai, where the
translated detective stories were well accepted with the city’s urban space emerging under the
foreign occupation. Based on David Der-wei Wang’s concept of “repressed modernity,” I
propose an approach that would probe into the mentality and the readership in urban
Shanghai where the city’s space and mode of production were undergoing a series of drastic
changes before the 1900s.
In order to reconstruct the mentality and readership in relation to the formation of
urban space in Shanghai, several questions should be raised: Who were these readers? Were
they elite intellectuals or the general public? Did the city’s industrialization and urbanization
influence the citizens’ perception and imagination of their community? If the answer to these
questions is yes, can we then apply Georg Simmel’s and Raymond Williams’
conceptualization of urban mentality to Shanghai in terms of the individuality gained through
the division of labor? Also, could this new urban mentality anticipate an imported genre with
a fresh urban theme? In my initial survey of Shanghai’s urbanization, I would try to
contextualize the imported detective fiction in its emerging urban space, arguing that the
wide readership and popularity of translated English detective fiction should not be regarded
merely as the success of a reformist medium to propagate the utilitarian agenda, but rather
because it is a genre that had already been anticipated by a rising urban mentality. As a
preliminary proposal, my framework treats the genre’s import as the reflection of the urban
literati’s subjective tension, which, I suggest, was also in response to the rapid spatial
transformation and the specification/ division of labor in the pre-modern Shanghai.
Key words: Sherlock Holmes, Shanghai, translation, alternative modernity, urban
space,ivision of labor, individuality, incognito, bourgeois literati, subjective tension
Pacific Edge – a Critical Utopia That Is Socially and Environmentally Dialectical
秦小玳
國立政治大學
Utopia revived and transformed into a new genre in the 1960s and 70s, which is
named by Tom Moylan as critical utopia and anti-anti-utopia by Fredric Jameson. It evolves
dialectically from utopia and dystopia. The famous authors of utopian writing during this
period are, to name a few, Ursula Le Quin (The Dispossessed). Marge Piercy (Woman on the
Edge of Time), and Samuel Delany (Triton). The new genre stresses the conflicts and
problems in the utopia, and even examines, in a way of self-reflexivity, the conventions of
traditional utopia. The authors aim to contend that utopia is not just at the service of escapism
or biting satire or criticism, but provides more perspectives for the reader to ruminate on and
more alternatives as they think about changing the status quo.
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge is the last piece of the Three Californias series.
The first book, The Wild Shore, is about a post-apocalyptic California. In the second one, The
Gold Coast, the state becomes hyper-technological. The region in the Pacific Edge seems to
be congenially earth-friendly. Yet it is the most serious of the three because it has the closest
version of contemporary society, and therefore intends deeper reflections. Since Francis
Bacon’s Atlantis, who adds scientific elements into his ideal imagined community, utopia is
no longer a place for nostalgic regression that simply tries to satisfy people’s yearning for
“the good old days.” Utopia is thus often combined with a vital element that predominates
over the place as the most concern of the community. In Bacon’s and H.G. Wells’s cases, it is
science. In the Pacific Edge the environmental issues are the core of the conflicts of the town
Robinson’s story resides at. Along with the issues is juxtaposed with the self-reflexivity of
the novel itself. It takes on a form of a parallel narrative by one of the characters in the main
story line. The problems this secondary narrative brings forth have a critically dialectical
relation with the environmental issues.
Moreover, Dana Phillips in The Truth of Ecology invalidates the discipline of
ecocriticism, refuting that literature possesses any ecological senses. He contends that
ecology is a science, but unfortunately becomes a point of view decorated with utopian
values, such as balance, harmony, unity, and purity, in the academia of humanities. The
Pacific Edge, interestingly, denies these utopian values mentioned above. The problems in
this imagined town, embedded in the complicated social relations and their major business to
balance conservation of the land and development of it, are extremely disturbing. This paper
will, firstly, try to demonstrate that the self-reflexivity and the environmental issues in this
novel are dialectically related. Secondly, it will argue against Phillips, through this
demonstration process with clarification of the differences between the two terms, ecological
and environmental, to prove that literature can be ecological without dealing with ecology as
a science.
The environment is comprised of humans, society, and nature, and they have
intertwining impact on one another. As John Passmore’s distinction between problems in
ecology and ecological problems indicates, while the former exclusively belongs to scientific
field, the latter is about how humans in a society deal with nature. The ecological sense of
literature is shown in the representation of the latter.
Walter Benjamin’s Flâneur in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
金汎
國立政治大學
Mrs. Dalloway (1925), one of the successful novels of Virginia Woolf, explores the
hidden springs of thoughts and actions in one day in Clarissa Dalloway’s life. Virginia Woolf
(1882-1941) is the most important English modern novelists, critic, and stylist. She
interweaves the narrative, reveries, and memories to display the complicated consciousnesses
of human minds in Mrs. Dalloway. In this article, Benjaminian flânerie is applied to the
discussion of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. Firstly, this essay will discuss the idea of
flâneur from Charles Baudelaire’s “The Painter of Modern Life,” to Benjamin’s critical
essays about flâneur. Secondly, Mrs. Dalloway as a flâneuse will be explicated.
In Janet Wolff’s “Invisible Flâneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity,” Wolff
has argued “heroes of modernity thus share the possibility and prospect of lone travel, of
voluntary up-rooting, of anonymous arrival at a new place. They are, of course, all men.”
(40). She believes that it is impossible for the flâneuse to be existent because the flânerie is
the privilege of upper-class males. It is only the male observer that has the power to gaze.
Some critics also argue that in Charles Baudelaire’s “À Une Passante,” the passing woman is
merely regarded as a reflected projection of male poet’s imagination and women have no
freedom to gaze at the public spheres. Actually, these ideas not only do not subvert the
Victorian ethics of space in which men as observing subjects and woman as passively
observed objects but also reinforce the ideology of clear division of gender roles in
patriarchal society. In fact, Benjamin’s interpretation of flâneur as modern spectatorship has
been narrowed down by some feminist critics as the proof of Benjamin’s attitudes towards
gender roles. For some feminist critics, flâneur is the one with the freedom to see and possess.
However, in my view, Benjaminian flâneur can be regarded as an observing position rather
than a real figure in the urban discourse. Flânerie represents the position at the center as well
as at the margin of the crowd. Flâneur has the ability of both empathy and alienation.
In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, roaming on the London streets, the protagonist,
Clarissa can merge with the crowds most of the time and at the same time observes their
activities in an alienated position. Clarissa always has the empathetic feelings towards the
people around her but sometimes she has to be alienated from others to have her own space in
her attic room. Her moods are changing and transforming with the surroundings which she
participates in. In her party she knows how to reconcile people from different classes and
backgrounds. As a successful hostess, she functions as the mediator to make the discordance
into a harmonious whole. Clarissa Dalloway is the one who can perceive others feelings in an
alienated position.
Clarissa, as a female, is the outsider of male society. Her stance towards the patriarchal
society is complicated. She both reconciles and resists the power and domination held by
patriarchal society. She asserts her flexibility, changeability, and being hard to define when
facing the insiders (males) of British society. People who confront her have the risk of losing
fixed and stable identities such as Peter Walsh. This reveals that the conventional forms of
the fixed characters are not implied in this text. By weaving narratives, events, facts, reveries,
and memories together, Woolf presents the three-dimensional characters. Characters’
experiences and profiles are constructed and reconstructed.
The Benjaminian flânerie itself is an ambivalent idea to apply to the discussion of
women’s role in public fields of society. Women as the outsiders in the male-dominated
world are similar to flâneur’s characteristic of marginality and alienation. The analytic as
well as empathetic abilities of flâneur are featured in Clarissa’s personality. Clarissa, as the
flâneuse, shows her empathy to others in an alienated position.
Mrs. Dalloway: the Street Experience of Flanerie
詹淳惠
國立政治大學
As the most distinguished and widely discussed novel of Virginia Woolf, Mrs.
Dalloway is constantly considered to be one of the masterpieces of modernism, or the
representative work of stream of consciousness. By deliberate intention making the plot of
Mrs. Dalloway lack integrity, unity as well as the abundant and comprehensive depictions of
exteriority, Virginia Woolf lays emphasis on the fluidity of consciousness and the
contradiction of each character’s internal thoughts and feelings. Through the movement of
consciousness from remote recollection of the preceding life to current trains of thought, the
past and the present in Mrs. Dalloway are gradually taking shape. The whole story is, for the
most part, constituted by several characters’ street walking experience in such a metropolitan
city as London. Corresponding with every character’s ceaseless ramble on the metropolitan
streets, the springs of consciousness and thoughts in each individual’s mind seem to flow
continuously and smoothly, like the blood circulating in the entire body. By means of the
interweaving and entanglement of each character’s street walking experience and myriads of
memories as well as impression brought about by this unique urban experience, Virginia
Woolf successfully and effectively weaves a web of events out of multitudinous fragments
and discontinuous story lines. In other words, the driving gear to construct the explicit
framework and the complete contents of Mrs. Dalloway is, definitely and undoubtedly, the
urban walking experience with which the latent and abstruse flow of inner meditation
discovers a place of emancipation. Therefore, it is plausible to contend that Mrs. Dalloway is
a novel of flanerie on the metropolitan streets and most of the characters, whether female or
male, more or less bear the distinguishing characteristics of the flaneur. In this article, Walter
Benjamin’s points of view concerning flaneur the walker and flanerie the behavior as a whole
are serviceable and available to examine the actions of walking, the unique features of flaneur,
and the impact brought forth by this street walking experience on almost every character in
Mrs. Dalloway. The focal point of this article will be centered on the urban experiences of
Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith and their correspondence with the
distinguishing characteristics of the flaneur. Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith
possess certain representative attributes of the flaneur. That is to say, they are in essence the
flaneurs, strolling on the metropolitan street and observing the kaleidoscopic happenings and
countenances of every kind in the city. The reason to define them both as flaneur the walker
rather than to distinguish a female flaneuse from a male flaneur lies in the fact that the flaneur
is not so much a specific figure, whose gender in truth has considerable influences on the
behavior and the position in society, as a historical and social phenomenon which represents
a particular kind of culture. The flaneur, in a word, is a type of people rather than a definite
individual. Hence, the gender issue in this article is not the weight-bearing point while we
deal with the phenomenon of flaneur manifested in Mrs. Dalloway. To view Mrs. Dalloway
from this angle, Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Warren Smith respectively demonstrate the
distinctive traits of the flaneur. Clarissa’s love for the big city and walking on the street as
well as her acute sense of invisibility within the multitude define her as the flaneur. The
strolling experience contributes to the abundance of the visual experience and the tactile
experience as well. At the same time, the characteristics of the flaneur exhibited by Septimus
consist in his sensitive observation of the outer world and the willingness to listen to the
voices of the world. Their features and personality, to certain degree, fit in with those of the
flaneur and thus, make Mrs. Dalloway a novel of the flaneur.
Walking on the Street and Searching for Self in Virginia Woolf’s “Street Haunting”
何如媖
國立政治大學
Traditionally, women are the objects for men to observed, but now it’s time for
women to be visible and to see the world. This paper intends to discuss what the purpose of
walking outside for a Flâneuse is and how the heroine, a Flâneuse in the “Street Haunting,”
observes the external London Street with her female imagination and fantasy. Furthermore,
women’s walking can also be regarded as the way to figure out what her self is in the process
of observation and interaction with the other people. Women are no longer the objects
observed by Flâneur; they are active Flâneuses who walk and observe in this world by
themselves.
When it comes to city-stroller, Flâneur, it’s always the male figure who “goes
botanizing on the asphalt.” Men can walk in the streets, arcades, and other public spaces to
observe and to be observed. However, women are prohibited from walking outside; therefore,
women have no chance to see the world. In Janet Wolff’s “The Invisible Flâneuse,” she
argues that women are invisible both in the public spaces and literature of modernity.
Furthermore, she claims pessimistically that women can be visible in the second half of
nineteenth century only because they are “as public signs of their husband’s wealth or
consumers” in the public space. In literature, when women are visible, they are only the
objects. However, in Virginia Woolf’s short story, “Street Haunting,” the heroine becomes
the Flâneurse walking on the London Street, observes actively everything in London Street,
and describes the scenes of the outside world with her extraordinary imagination. In her
walking, the heroine not only gives sharp observation to the external scenes, such as London
street and nature, but she also tries to describe internal emotions of other people walking on
the London street. Those present scenes described by the Flâneurse not only show the present
social conditions in London, but these scenes also recall the heroine’s past and memories in
her youth.
More important, the purpose of walking for Flâneuse is not only to buy a pencil;
rather, the walking around the London is a way to search her self. When Flâneuse walks, she
does not follow any systematic direction, nor does she show how she walks around the street.
Her non-linear and mysterious walking totally shows that women do not follow the regular
and normal ways to live and to walk. Also, this non-linear route indicates that women are not
willing to follow the fixed patriarchal regulations and they intend to figure out another way
for them to live. When Flâneuse walks, she keeps asking herself where she is and follows her
own will to walk and to observe. Without being limited by the traditional norms, Flâneuse
walks out her house in order to search her self. With walking, observing, and writing, the
heroine has the chance to see the external world without limitation and to examine who she is
when she encounters with other people and the whole world.
Key words: Flâneur/Flâneuse, Virginia Woolf, “Street Haunting,” walking, nature,
public/private, present/past, self
Cultural Production in the Arthurian Court: A Glimpse of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
郭如蘋
國立中山大學
Well before the emergence of the modern sense of “city,” the cultural life of the
majority of medieval people depends on and surrounds feudal manors and castles. People
from the upper class, especially the royal families, live in the court, as their residence, a
locale that cultivates their mentality, whether consciously or unconsciously. In Sir Thomas
Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, the Arthurian knights and kings often move from one
destination to another in a rather rapid pace. During the movement among places, different
kinds of (sub-)culture clash and there needs solutions to compromise distinct cultures.
Questions such as how the characters, especially King Arthur, deal with new problems
concerning new environment will be explored. Meanwhile, Malory’s representation of
medieval culture and its production in places such as Caerleon and Camelot will be discussed
too. How does Malory imagine the city of Caerleon and Camelot? The romancer’s
imagination of these two places presents a different picture from that of his predecessors. For
instance, unlike Geoffrey of Monmouth’s interest in the court held at Caerleon, Malory puts
more emphasis on Camelot. Though Malory makes a few references to Caerleon, including
that this is where Arthur’s coronation takes place and where Sir Gareth’s wedding takes place,
he devotes even more efforts to painting Camelot. Geoffrey’s Caerleon is associated with
affluence, while Malory’s with treachery and illicit relationship. Some scholars deem that
Malory’s Camelot is a romantic locale, connected with joy and harmony, yet Malory does not
romanticize the court at Caerleon when he describes the young Arthur’s illicit behaviors.
Through the description of Malory, I will attempt to interpret the kind of culture based on the
activities happening in these two courts. Arthur is said to be crowned at Caerleon, so both in
Geoffrey and Malory, yet Arthur’s wedding with Gwenyvere is scheduled at Caerleon, in
Geoffrey’s version, and at Camelot, in Malory’s imagination. The question why Arthur
gradually moves his political and cultural center from a wealthy and pleasant city at Caerleon
to Camelot is interesting. My tentative assumption of the shift in Malory is that his Arthur
attempts to shake off the yoke from the previous generation, embodied by the magician and
prophet figure, Merlin, and to break from any association with the king’s own cruel act of
abandoning infants, Merlin’s preaching about his sexual misdemeanors, and ultimately
everything reminding people of bad name and dishonor at the Caerleon court. By thus doing,
the new king is able to establish his own kingdom without interference from outside.
Key words: court, Caerleon, Camelot, cultural production, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte
Darthur
The Modern Beast in the City: Emile Zola’s La Bête Humaine
耿尚瑜
國立台灣師範大學
Published in 1890, Emile Zola’s La Bête Humaine is set in the late nineteenth century
of the Second Empire of France. The book features the world of trains—which stretches its
arm not only from city to country, but also from the technologically progressive human to the
atavistic beast. The plot centers on various characters’ intertwined love-death relationships. A
series of intersecting relationships as well as crimes unfold, with all of them connected to the
railway. Throughout the novel characters are driven by strong obsession that leads
themselves as well as others to destruction. This death instinct culminates in the psychopathic
protagonist, Jacques Lantier. Unlike other characters in the novel, Jacques figures directly in
the genealogical scheme that Zola works out for the Rougon-Macquart series. Being the
“human beast” in the novel, Jacques suffers from an inherited defect of urge to murder
women. As a train driver, his bestial instinct is at first controlled by degrees when he’s
driving the engine—La Lison.
Throughout the novel, the train is frequently compared to the modern man with
similar traits, as Jacques’ engine is depicted not only as his “other self”, but even is
personified as a mistress. Later on when the engine breaks down, Jacques also goes out of
control and kills his lover, Severine. Under Zola’s pen both man and machine goes beyond
control despite the advances of modern technology. In human reason still exists
unexplainable rupture, as Zola’s characters face in the modern city. The situation of the
modern man is relying too much on the machine but at times getting out of control. In this
sense the machine becomes another form of “human beast”.
My interest is to explore Zola’s use of the locomotive: how it functions as a
metaphoric device to depicting the possible “inherited defect” of bestiality in the modern man,
and I will also bring the gender issue into consideration in examining Jacques Lantier’s
malady of misogyny. I attempt to analyze the novel from a feminist perspective, in
employing French feminist Julia Kristeva’s notion of abjection to explain Jacques’ killing
desire. Kristeva explains abjection as a perverse form of protection against that which
threatens the identity of the subject. For a subject to exist within the symbolic and for the
symbolic order to remain stable and secure, the abject must be contained and controlled,
which is impossible. Therefore abjection attests to the potential frailty of the symbolic, which
in the novel Jacques’s case is the feminine that threatens his symbolic order and arouses his
feeling of horror.
Invisible Cities: Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner
王瓊梅 Chyong- Mei Wang
淡江大學
In 1982, Ridley Scott introduced Blade Runner to the audience. The film contains
religious philosophy and implications of the risks of genetic engineering. Throughout the
film, we can find lots of paranoid phenomenon, such as police with probing flashlights,
genetic engineering of the replicants, and Voight-Kampff test. Blade Runner’s space is
realistic but fantastic. Artificial animals and replicants are created as a substitute of real
human. I attempt to analyze the film from three parts: cyberpunk, ethic and visual gaze.
With these radical issues, I expect to rethink if the meaning of human will be changed and if
cities will affect human the development of history.
In Blade Runner, the plot begins from the industrial wasteland of Los Angeles in
Novembers, 2019. The earth is decaying. During a test of Voight Kampff, Leon Kowalski
kills the blade runner, Hoden. Bryant commands the ex-bladerunner, Deckard, to take the
mission- “retiring” those replicants (Nexus-6). Presenting a decentered and boundless space,
Blade Runner is designed in the future of a retrofitted past. In the beginning, futuristic
vehicles ramble through the polluted sky. Hundreds of flat-topped pyramidal buildings locate
in the city. One of the buildings has a huge television which plays the nostalgia images:
forties fashion domination and future visions.
The spaces feature is the most important element in the science fiction. The
cyberspace in Blade Runner is abstract, and it provides a narrative complement for the lost
visibility in the world. We don’t feel that we create the future because the future creates us.
Andrew Ross points out that “a typical reading of cyberpunk as urban dystopia in
cyperpunk.” Cyberspace stands for a mythological space, and cyperpunk presents an
ambivalent and terminal existence. In other words, cyperpunk is not merely a space, but it is
constructed by the system of the world. Cyberspace always exaggerates the disorder of the
city. In Blade Runner, cyberpunk provides the futuristic image in the 1980s. Cyberpunk
tends to neglect the narrative between urban mode and electronic mode and stresses on
dystopian cities. The city in Blade Runner has bright and dark appearance. Rains- slicked
Angeles streets present the invisible problem of the rational city. Meanwhile, Blade Runner
explores the urban existence and d reveals that Los Angeles city locates in a fractal
environment.
Giuliana Bruno mentions that the history plays an important role in Blade Runner.
Indeed, the replicant lacks “history to prove their identities and only Rachel survive because
she has the photograph to prove her identity. Many critics assume that the replicant desire to
become a true. The replicant creates a new discourse of rethinking the sense of time. In the
film, Tyrell doesn’t decode the life secret, so Roy, the replicant leader, kills him. Why does
Roy attempt to extend his life? Does he desires to live longer, or he hopes go into the normal
process of becoming the subject? Rachel represents another type of the replicant.Deckard
doesn’t retire her. She is implanted a Tyrell’s cousins’ memory to prevents her form
recognizing her replicant identity.
Donna Haraway defines a cyborg is “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and
organism.” She mentions the cyborg is regarded as a creature of fiction to reflect social
reality, political construction and world-changing situations. The cyborg is a creature of a
post-gender world. In Blade Runner, The replicant pose a treat to social order by asking the
question about the status of human.
If Ethic issues are the paradox of humanity, Voight-Kampff test plays the tools to
implicate those controversial issues. Deckard plays the detective role in the chaotic and
fantastic cyberpunk. In the world of Blade Runner, it includes many fakes or simulations:
artificial animals, memory implants, photographs and the Nexu6 Replicant. Additionally,
misty, foggy and grimy climates create the film is located in a mystic and chaotic landscape.
When audiences pay attention to the scene, you will discover the city is the hybrid of Tokyo,
Hong Kong, New York, and other big cities. It is bright in the modern city is bright, but it is
dare in the lower city. The Voight-Kampff test can’t gaze the real identity or reality. The
Eye/ I has formed a complex discourse to discuss the meaning of identity or reality. The
blade runner has played a conflictive role: he stands for human justice to clean those “evil”
replicant, but he chooses to escape from the human world with Rachel. The most important
of all, Deckard has started to find his identity in the invisible city!