Modern and postmodern selves/texts: Is totality
possible?
"The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
(relevant links) and 馬桶
前言︰
由Wordsworth 的 "A Slumber did my Spirit Seal"、Whitman的"Song of Myself"（Section
I）、Keats的"Ode to a Nightingale"和"Ode on Melancholy,"我們看到男性浪漫詩人對於與自然合一的崇尚，豐富自我的追尋（即便是體會痛苦）。
有趣的是，他們的詩中，女性被推崇為女神或自然（Lucy）的象徵，但另一方面，當時的女性詩人如Emily
Dickensen 和Christina Rossetti 卻常常以死亡為主題。（如Dickenson的 "I Heard
a Fly Buzz When I Die"、"Because I could not Stop for Death"）。她們也極少向男性詩人一樣處理追尋
(quest) 的主題。
問題︰
-
意識流技巧所表達的是什麼樣的主體？破碎的或是完整的？記憶時間和敘述時間的破碎代表主體的破碎嗎？
-
Granny Weatherall 的呈現和王文興的〈母親〉、William
Faulkner 的"A
Rose for Emily" 有何相同與不同？
-
在題材上，都和母／父親、愛人有關．"Jiling" 和 "A
Rose" 都和女性被遺棄有關，而且都是美國南方的故事。
-
Porter 對女性的描述和兩位男性現代作家有何不同？
-
Granny 對死亡的看法和Emily Dickensen 的有何不同？
-
後現代的主體為什麼會破碎？
Jilting of Granny Weatherall
Leading Questions:
-
How do you characterize Granny? What does she feel about being jilted?
What is she proud of?
-
How does Granny relate to the people around her? Why is she impatient
with the doctor as well as her daughter Cordelia?
-
Why is Granny pre-occupied with Hapsy?
-
This story is, like 母親，composed partly of interior monologue, and in
this story, Granny gets to be farther and farther away from reality.
How is she different from the mother in 母親?
Look at the sequence of events--together with Granny's own remarks-- in
the story re-arranged in a chronological order:
-
The letters from George and John. "how silly
she had been once."
-
Granny's first lover, George jilts her at the alter sixty years ago.
"For sixty years she had prayed against remembering her." "Find
him and be sure to tell him I forgot him." "Something not given back.
. . "
-
John "cursed like a sailor's parrot and said, 'I'll kill him for you.'"
-
Granny marries John.
-
Doctor Harry visits Granny when she delivers her first child.
-
Granny's child Hapsey dies. "When this one
was born it should be the last. .. . It should have been born first,
for it was the on she had truly wanted. . ."
-
John dies.
-
Granny raises her children alone.
-
Granny has milk-leg, and double pneumonia. (forty years ago)
-
Granny received satisfaction in the raising of her children and her house-keeping.
-
When Granny was sixty, she made her will and came down with a fever.
-
Granny has made plans to leave certain possessions to her children.
-
Doctor Harry visits Granny.--the beginning of the
narration
-
The priest, Father Connolly visits Granny. "It was like him to drop
in and inquire about her soul as if it were a teething baby. . . "
-
Her dead child Hapsey's ghostly form appears near her bed. _____
-
Granny rides in a cart with a man she knows. "she felt like singing
too. . . What if he did run away. . . "
-
Granny blows out the eerie light at the end.
How are they different from the way the story is told? What does
the stream-of-consciousness narration try to convey?
即使Granny 的意識混亂，前後時間錯置，但是她是一個個性鮮明的角色。她的自我矛盾都是可以解釋的，她的生平經歷也有因果可循。
馬桶
by 林燿德
與Granny 不同的是，詩的一開始「你」的記憶就是斷裂的，遺失的不可能恢復．
本詩結構：
１．以「當然」為轉折，「你」由宿醉的夜晚的三觭龍，成了馬桶中浮現的一張臉．變成喝了咳嗽藥水的意淫主體．
問題：為什麼馬桶和肉體……是同一回事？
２．到腳踏磁框的腔腸動物 －－digression to 電腦網路與馬桶對比
問題：性慾與排泄、都市的排泄物有何關係？人的排泄體系和都市的排泄體系有何關係？
３．「只是」－－擔心靈魂流失－－但冥想的焦點是排泄物是否反應身體健康－－坐姿如冥想者，抽煙以遮住臭味．
問題：詩中的主體統一嗎？
Relevant Links:
Jilting of Granny Weatherall
-
short introduction:
-
study guides:
For further studies
Literary
Criticism, Fall, 99; New
Criticism
