The Lacanian subject in Robert Frost’s “the road not taken”

IF 0.2 3区文学 0 LITERATURE

EXPLICATOR Pub Date : 2022-10-02 DOI:10.1080/00144940.2022.2146478

Weina Fan

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Abstract

Previous research regarding Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” mainly concerns who is the real poet or speaker in the poem. James L. Potter argues that the poet in the poem is Edward Thomas in that Frost is “mocking Thomas’ habit of fretting over choices, present and past” (52). R. F. Fleissner proposes that Frost’s “poetic intent was clearly enough to promote Thomas only, not himself (or also himself)” (22). In contrast, Larry Finger claims that the true poet is Frost despite that Frost did write the poem “with Edward Thomas in mind” (76). Similarly, David Ketterer claims that Frost, as the speaker of the poem, hints at “his life and identity” (78). Furthermore, Henry Hart notes that the poem “drew on an experience Frost had while walking in the woods near Plymouth, New Hampshire, before he had even met Thomas” (176). The debate seems to be focused on the identity of the speaker, namely, that of the speaking “I” which, in a Lacanian sense, is only the ego of Frost. In this article, I seek to read the poem in terms of the Lacanian subject through which I aim to invalidate the debate regarding the identity of the speaker, be it Thomas or Frost, and to delve into Frost’s unconscious. The Lacanian subject essentially differs from the Cartesian subject in that the former is the subject of the unconscious which is “structured like a language” (Lacan, Four Concepts: 203). Lacan further distinguishes that “the subject of the enunciation is definitely not to be confused with the one who takes the opportunity to say of himself I, as subject of the utterance... The I, as it appears in any utterance, is nothing more than what we call a shifter” (Lacan, My Teaching: 85). On the other hand, the subject of the statement, as Bruce Fink argues, “corresponds to the level of the ego, a constructed self taken to be the master of its own thoughts” (Fink 43). In this light, the debate concerning whether Thomas or Frost is the real speaker is of little significance since the “I,” as a shifter, represents only the ego of Frost which takes on various forms. Whether Frost wrote the https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2022.2146478

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罗伯特·弗罗斯特《未走的路》中的拉康主题

先前关于罗伯特·弗罗斯特的《未走的路》的研究主要关注谁是诗中真正的诗人或演说家。詹姆斯·L·波特认为，这首诗中的诗人是爱德华·托马斯，因为弗罗斯特“嘲笑托马斯为现在和过去的选择而烦恼的习惯”（52）。R.F.Fleissner提出，弗罗斯特的“诗歌意图显然足以只宣传托马斯，而不是他自己（或他自己）”（22）。相比之下，拉里·芬格声称真正的诗人是弗罗斯特，尽管弗罗斯特写这首诗时“考虑到了爱德华·托马斯”（76）。同样，大卫·凯特勒声称，作为这首诗的演讲者，弗罗斯特暗示了“他的生活和身份”（78）。此外，亨利·哈特指出，这首诗“借鉴了弗罗斯特在新罕布什尔州普利茅斯附近的树林中行走时的一段经历，当时他还没有见过托马斯”（176）。辩论似乎集中在演讲者的身份上，也就是说，在拉康意义上，“我”只是弗罗斯特的自我。在这篇文章中，我试图从拉康主题的角度阅读这首诗，通过这首诗我的目的是使关于演讲者身份的辩论无效，无论是托马斯还是弗罗斯特，并深入研究弗罗斯特的无意识。拉康主体与笛卡尔主体的本质区别在于，前者是“像语言一样结构”的无意识主体（拉康，四个概念：203）。拉康进一步指出，“发音的主体绝对不能与抓住机会说自己是我的人混淆，我是话语的主体……在任何话语中出现的我，只不过是我们所说的移位者”（拉康，我的教学：85）。另一方面，正如布鲁斯·芬克所说，陈述的主题“对应于自我的水平，一个被认为是自己思想大师的构建自我”（芬克43）。有鉴于此，关于托马斯还是弗罗斯特是真正的演讲者的争论意义不大，因为“我”作为一个转换者，只代表了弗罗斯特的自我，它呈现出各种形式。弗罗斯特是否写了https://doi.org/10.1080/00144940.2022.2146478

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EXPLICATOR LITERATURE-

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期刊介绍： Concentrating on works that are frequently anthologized and studied in college classrooms, The Explicator, with its yearly index of titles, is a must for college and university libraries and teachers of literature. Text-based criticism thrives in The Explicator. One of few in its class, the journal publishes concise notes on passages of prose and poetry. Each issue contains between 25 and 30 notes on works of literature, ranging from ancient Greek and Roman times to our own, from throughout the world. Students rely on The Explicator for insight into works they are studying.