| Abstract: | 僅管美國在1954年因布朗控訴教育局案而開啟廢除「種族隔離政策」的扉頁，然而，長久以來所實行的相關思想與言論，如隔離政策和種族歧視，卻從無間斷。本研究將分析理查․萊特(Richard Wright)俳句中語言的使用，進而探討他如何將美國的語言從種族歧視的制約中解套。透過俳句的創作，萊特試圖重新建構語言的新意義，揭露語言中潛藏的種族歧視思想，進而發展出一種新思維，使得他得以在這種去種族化的語言模式下，能描述且論述與種族歧視相關的事件和議題。就萊特而言，俳句不僅止於自然之詩，更是自身經驗和觀察對社會經濟所進行的檢視批判。本研究所探討的文本涵蓋理查萊特畢生的俳句作品(4,000首)。首先，本研究解讀其俳句中廣泛的主題與對社會政治批判所作的指涉。其次，本研究探討作品中反覆出現的文字意象，進而梳理詩中批判性的符號語言。在互文性的框架下閱讀俳句，本研究將詩與詩之間的排列順序，手稿，乃至畢生作品，一併解析，讓意義得以展延。更甚者，萊特所賦予文字一種小說式的想像空間，以及他所勾勒出的文字象徵意義與文字間是有密不可分的關係。因此，萊特的俳句試圖改變整個意識形態觀點，而非只是效法日本俳句的本質形式。僅管英文創作的俳句早已被接受理解，本研究也將釐清先前評論家的誤解，並且也指出萊特的詩作絕非僅限於自然詩，更是超越時代性的對立敵意。
Though the racist Jim Crow Laws began to be dismantled after Brown versus Board of Education in 1954, long-held racist practices, thought and speech persisted. This study would explore how Wright used haiku in this period as a means of taking back the American language from the realm of conventionalized racism. He reworked language in haiku often by exposing the latent racism in the language and social context so as to introduce a way of thinking which could describe observed events in a deracialized mode. This project would explore how he was less interested in emulating haiku as a Japanese form per se (as existing scholarship assumes) than in dismantling the ideological uses of the American language in his day to oppress African Americans. Sensitive to the connotations of words, he exploited haiku’s brevity and concomitant focus on the limited words present in a verse so as to deconstruct race and class as naturalized in American society in language. Instead, he sought to synthesize a symbolic poetic language and semiotic of his own over the course of his larger body of haiku verses and sequences. For Wright haiku was much more than a form of nature poetry: as in his Twelve Million Black Voices of 1941, his critical look at socio-economic conditions for Blacks expresses emotional states which are bound up in his experiences and observations. By studying not only his edited haiku volumes (of over 800 verses), in variously arrangements with which he experimented, but also his entire oeuvre of haiku (over 4,000), I would (1) examine the breadth of his subject matter, analyzing the extent to which he seems to have included or excluded verses suggesting a socio-political critique, and (2) examine recurrent words and images so as to understand his critical semiotic within the various versions and arrangements of his manuscripts. Other questions which need to be asked include: How did he adapt the haiku to the needs and interests reflected in his prose works of the 1950s, such as White Man, Listen! and Black Power? How do Wright’s particular experiences in his life and in the lives of the fictional characters in his novels suggests reasons to be angry and issues in need of addressing in order to overcome the racist Jim Crow ideology? Haiku are not read as isolated verses but rather as intratextually informed by their place in the arrangements and sequences, manuscripts, or his entire oeuvre. I also assume that he has applied a novelistic imagination to words, seeing himself as developing the symbolic meanings and associations of words to transform the ideological landscape, not simply to emulate the haiku form as Japanese poets were understood to have written it according to the texts available in Wright’s day. Though the understanding of haiku in English is beginning to develop, this study would correct many misreadings found in the work of previous critics (Hakutani; Tener) who see Wright’s haiku as simply nature poetry or failed haiku to the very extent they present antagonisms of the era. |
