Contagion and Disgust in Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Children

IF 0.3 3区 文学 0 LITERATURE, SLAVIC
Giulia Dossi
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

The dualistic pairs of romanticism/rationalism and nature/science have traditionally shaped readings of Turgenev’s Fathers and Children. This article, building on affect theory and theories of the grotesque, examines Bazarov as a character who does not fit into either model. As an outsider, he represents a threat of infection to all the other characters in the novel. His excessive, animalistic life force elicits disgust in those surrounding him and forces them to distance themselves from him for fear of a “life contagion,” which would insert an uncontrollable, repulsive life-energy into their predictable genteel existence. Additionally, Bazarov is characterized by a grotesque affective system, that is, he experiences feelings that are contradictory and elude a definitive reading, right up to the novel’s end. After being exposed to his ambiguous and incongruous feelings, the other characters are at risk of “affective contagion”: they might start experiencing feelings as grotesquely as Bazarov does. This trend towards ambiguity rather than legibility defies the expectations of clarity in psychological prose that critics at the time demanded and that readers have been taught to look for. This article thus proposes pervasive illegibility of character as a previously unidentified trait of Russian Realism, and uses Fathers and Children’s Bazarov as a vivid case study.

屠格涅夫《父亲与孩子》中的传染病与厌恶
浪漫主义/理性主义和自然/科学的二元配对传统上塑造了屠格涅夫的父亲和孩子的阅读。本文以情感理论和怪诞理论为基础,考察了巴扎罗夫这个不属于任何一种模式的人物。作为一个局外人,他对小说中所有其他人物都构成了感染的威胁。他过度的、动物性的生命力引起了周围人的厌恶,迫使他们远离他,因为他们害怕“生命传染”,这将把一种无法控制的、令人厌恶的生命能量插入到他们可预测的文雅生活中。此外,巴扎罗夫的特点是一个怪诞的情感系统,也就是说,他经历的感觉是矛盾的,逃避了一个明确的阅读,直到小说的结尾。在暴露了他的暧昧和不协调的感情之后,其他角色面临着“情感传染”的风险:他们可能会像巴扎罗夫一样开始经历奇怪的感情。这种倾向于模棱两可而非易读性的趋势,违背了当时评论家所要求的对心理散文的清晰性的期望,也违背了读者被教导要寻找的。因此,本文提出普遍存在的人物难以辨认是俄罗斯现实主义的一个先前未被发现的特征,并以父亲和孩子的巴扎罗夫作为一个生动的案例研究。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
RUSSIAN LITERATURE
RUSSIAN LITERATURE LITERATURE, SLAVIC-
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
50
期刊介绍: Russian Literature combines issues devoted to special topics of Russian literature with contributions on related subjects in Croatian, Serbian, Czech, Slovak and Polish literatures. Moreover, several issues each year contain articles on heterogeneous subjects concerning Russian Literature. All methods and viewpoints are welcomed, provided they contribute something new, original or challenging to our understanding of Russian and other Slavic literatures. Russian Literature regularly publishes special issues devoted to: • the historical avant-garde in Russian literature and in the other Slavic literatures • the development of descriptive and theoretical poetics in Russian studies and in studies of other Slavic fields.
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