电磁电报与象征主义

文艺理论研究 ›› 2023, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (5): 194-204.

• 专题：媒介技术诗学研究 • 上一篇下一篇

电磁电报与象征主义

于雷

出版日期:2023-09-25 发布日期:2023-11-15
作者简介:于雷,文学博士,北京外国语大学外国文学研究所教授,主要从事英美文学与批评理论研究。通讯地址:北京市海淀区西三环北路19号北京外国语大学西校区外国文学研究所,邮政编码:100089。电子邮箱:yulei@bfsu.edu.cn。
基金资助:
国家社科基金一般项目“19世纪英美小说的媒介技术诗学研究”[项目编号:22BWW072]和“北京外国语大学中青年卓越人才支持计划”的阶段性成果。

Magnetic Telegraph and Symbolism: A Study of the Media-Tech Poetics of 19^th-Century American Symbolist Fiction

Online:2023-09-25 Published:2023-11-15
About author:Yu Lei, Ph. D., is a Professor in the Research Institute of Foreign Literature, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing 100089, China. His main research areas are Anglo-American literature and theories of criticism. Address: Research Institute of Foreign Literature, Beijing Foreign Studies University, No.19 North Xisanhuan Road, Beijing 100089, China. Email: yulei@bfsu.edu.cn
Supported by:
National Social Sciences Foundation of China (22BWW072).

摘要/Abstract

摘要： 电磁电报作为19世纪初的“新媒介”为美国象征主义文学文化开创了独特的历史时空语境,然而象征主义与电磁电报在诗学意义上的同构性却始终游离于相关研究视野之外。象征主义诗歌和侦探小说在麦克卢汉那里意味着电磁电报时代精神召唤之下的文类新产品,但电磁电报赖以发生的技术文化条件恰恰源自象征主义那一古老的认识论本身,尤其是它与19世纪上半叶电磁现象的揭示、埃及象形文字考古新发现以及美国清教主义思维范式之间发生的某种机缘巧合的碰撞。19世纪美国的三位象征主义小说巨擘爱伦·坡、霍桑和麦尔维尔恰恰以其独特的叙述策略成了上述同构性的最具代表性的见证者:他们不仅从电磁电报的信息加密技术中汲取灵感,更在元语言意义上围绕电磁电报的象征主义运作逻辑,演绎出一种从模型化到失真化再到自反化的逐步推进的媒介技术诗学。

关键词: 象征主义, 电磁电报, 媒介技术, 诗学

Abstract: Magnetic telegraph, a novel “new media” technology in the early 19^th century, created a unique historical chronotope that profoundly influenced American symbolic literary culture. However, there has been a persistent oversight regarding the poetic connection between symbolism and the magnetic telegraph. Symbolist poetry and detective stories, as observed by Marshall McLuhan, exemplified the emergence of new genres inspired by the spirit of the age of the magnetic telegraph. Yet, it is essential to recognize that the techno-cultural conditions that gave birth to the invention of the magnetic telegraph stemmed from the ancient epistemology of symbolism itself. This connection involved the providential convergence of symbolist epistemology, the discovery of electromagnetism in the early 19^th century, archaeological revelations of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and the spiritual mindset of American puritanism. This study focuses on three symbolist figures — Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville-who bear witness to the age of the magnetic telegraph through their narrative strategies. Notably, these authors were not only inspired by the encryption techniques of the magnetic telegraph, but they also harnessed its symbolist principles in a metalinguistic sense, fostering a media-tech poetics that evolved from modelization to anamorphization and self-reflexivization.

Key words: symbolism, magnetic telegraph, media tech, poetics

于雷. 电磁电报与象征主义[J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(5): 194-204.

乔吉奥·阿甘本:《潜能》,王立秋等译。桂林:漓江出版社,2014年。
[Agamben, Giorgio. Potentialities. Trans. Wang Liqiu, et al. Guilin: Lijiang Publishing Limited, 2014.]
Erlich, Gloria Chasson. “Deadly Innocence: Hawthorne's Dark Women.” The New England Quarterly 41.2(1968):163179.
Feidelson, Jr., Charles. Symbolism and American Literature. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953.
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.
Gilmore, Paul. Aesthetic Materialism: Electricity and American Romanticism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.
Haig, James. Symbolism: Or Mind-Matter-Language as the Elements of Thinking and Reasoning and as the Necessary Factors of Human Knowledge. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1869.
Harrison, James Albert. “Introduction.” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Vol.XIV. New York: G. D. Sproul, 1902. v-viii.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 15 Vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1882.
Irwin, John Thomas. American Hieroglyphics: The Symbol of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics in the American Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of the Mass Media. Trans. Kathleen Cross. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000.
Matthiessen, Francis Otto. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941.
McCormack, Jerusha Hull. “Domesticating Delphi: Emily Dickinson and the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph.” American Quarterly 55.4(2003):569601.
McLuhan, Marshall. “Speed of Cultural Change.” College Composition and Communication. 9.1(1958):1620.
McLuhan, Marshall, and Bruce R. Powers. The Global Village: Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. 2 Vols. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1929.
---. The Works of Herman Melville. 16 Vols. London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1922.
Menke, Richard. Telegraphic Realism: Victorian Fiction & Other Information Systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008.
Miller, Joseph Hillis. On Literature. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Moehler, John Adam. Symbolism: On Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences Between Catholics and Protestants, as Evidenced by Their Symbolic Writings. Vol.II. Trans. James Robertson. London: Charles Dolman, 1843.
Noll, A. Michael. The Evolution of Media. Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2007.
Peyre, Henri. What Is Symbolism? Trans. Emmett Parker. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2010.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: G. D. Sproul, 1902.
Preece, William Henry and James Sivewright. Telegraphy. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1914.
Rancière, Jacques. Mute Speech: Literature, Critical Theory, and Politics. Trans. James Swenson. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.
---. The Flesh of Words: The Politics of Writing. Trans. Charlotte Mandell. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004.
Staiti, Paul. “Samuel F.B. Morse's Search for a Personal Style: The Anxiety of Influence.” Winterthur Portfolio 16.4(1981):253281.
Standage, Tom. The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers. New York: Walker Publishing Co, Inc., 1998.
Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006.

[1]	戴登云. 说不可说:对言说之原初悖论的文学性裁决 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(5): 83-92.
[2]	曾巍. 基于受众体验的文学改编模式及媒介技术反思 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(4): 10-18.
[3]	潘建伟. 陈衍的“新诗”观及其后期诗学的特征 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(4): 214-223.
[4]	任明华. 《古今名家诗学大成》与明代传奇小说的文体发展 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(2): 45-55.
[5]	聂成军. 如何以“笑”行“怪诞”？——一种福柯式的重影诗学 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(2): 192-202.
[6]	张山川. 艺术哲学，抑或象征美学？——论保罗·德·曼对黑格尔《美学》的解构主义阐释 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2023, 43(2): 218-226.
[7]	陈丹丹. 从世界文学到世界文论——走向跨文化美学的新尝试 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(6): 40-48.
[8]	龙野. “吴中七子”的诗学取向与乾嘉诗坛关系探论 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(6): 165-173.
[9]	顾明栋. 为何一千个读者就有一千个哈姆雷特？——论诠释的开放性与文本表意逻辑 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(3): 80-89.
[10]	杨婷婷. 新发现汪辟疆《小奢摩馆诗话》的诗学史价值 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(2): 175-183.
[11]	郑佳琳. 五言排律在诗学理论上的阐述过程及命名原理探析 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(2): 184-193.
[12]	李国辉. 瓦格纳美学与象征主义的音乐转向 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(1): 21-31.
[13]	涂慧. 《花间集》的现代审美症候与福瑟克的对等译介诗学 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(1): 32-42.
[14]	方舒雅. 转向与超越：北宋诗学语言观念下的“换骨夺胎” [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2022, 42(1): 218-226.
[15]	申扶民. 马尔库塞“奥斯维辛之后”诗学思想的阐发 [J]. 文艺理论研究, 2021, 41(6): 102-111.

电磁电报与象征主义

Magnetic Telegraph and Symbolism: A Study of the Media-Tech Poetics of 19^th-Century American Symbolist Fiction

PDF (PC)

可视化

摘要/Abstract

引用本文

使用本文

相关文章 15

编辑推荐

Metrics

本文评价

电磁电报与象征主义

Magnetic Telegraph and Symbolism: A Study of the Media-Tech Poetics of 19th-Century American Symbolist Fiction

PDF (PC)

可视化

摘要/Abstract

引用本文

使用本文

相关文章 15

编辑推荐

Metrics

本文评价

Magnetic Telegraph and Symbolism: A Study of the Media-Tech Poetics of 19^th-Century American Symbolist Fiction