ABSTRACT

Iain Banks’s first published novel, The Wasp Factory (1984), set the scene for a literary career renowned for playful transgressions of genre and form. The novel addresses the topical debate on human subjectivity by capitalizing on the Gothic and postmodernism, both of which demonstrate a mutual concern with human subjectivity with a distinctly anti-humanist slant. This study argues that the novel partakes in the foregoing debate through an engagement with a literary tradition inextricably entwined with the discourse of humanism, namely, the Bildungsroman or the novel of formation. Despite the novel’s striking overlap with the Bildungsroman, the examination of its significance has been relegated to the periphery of scholarly attention. Accordingly, drawing on and expanding Linda Hutcheon’s notion of postmodern parody, this study posits that Banks’s novel is a postmodern parody of the Bildungsroman, which taps into subversive Gothic elements in its setting and characterization, which are the two cardinal constituents of the Bildungsroman, as its ironic catalyst in a bid to critique the status of Man in postmodern times. In other words, the novel reprises the tradition of the Bildungsroman with ironic critical distance, depicting the horrific disintegration of humanist subjectivity into posthuman monstrosity instead of his teleological advancement toward positive identity formation and social incorporation.

摘要

伊恩·班克斯出版的第一部小说《黄蜂工厂》（1984），为他的文学生涯奠定了基础，以有趣的流派和形式的越界而闻名。小说利用哥特式和后现代主义来解决关于人类主体性的热门争论，这两种风格都表现出对人类主体性的共同关注，并具有明显的反人道主义倾向。本研究认为，小说通过与人文主义话语密不可分的文学传统（即成长小说或成长小说）的接触，参与了上述争论。尽管这部小说与成长小说有惊人的重叠，但对其意义的考察却被置于学术关注的边缘。因此，本研究借鉴并扩展了琳达·哈钦的后现代戏仿概念，认为班克斯的小说是对成长小说的后现代戏仿，它在其背景和人物塑造中利用了颠覆性的哥特式元素，这是成长小说的两个主要组成部分，作为其讽刺的催化剂，旨在批判后现代时代的人的地位。换句话说，这部小说以讽刺性的批判距离再现了成长小说的传统，描绘了人文主义主体性可怕地解体为后人类的怪物，而不是他朝着积极的身份形成和社会融合的目的论进步。