題名: Vizenor and Japan:The Cross Cultural Imagination in Hiroshima Bugi 作者: Ying-Wen Yu
貢獻者: ????????
關鍵詞: Gerald Vizenor;Hiroshima Bugi;Native American literature;comedy;tragedy;comic holotrope 日期: 2007-12-07
上傳時間: 2009-12-10T02:30:31Z 出版者: ??????????
摘要: This paper concerns the comic holotropes in Gerald Vizenor?s Hiroshima Bugi(2003) and seeks to study the link between Native American
literature and comedy. Since Aristotle, the position and the value of tragedy have been considered higher than comedy. Comedy, however, is regarded as ?an imitation of characters of a lower type.? The Western traditional points of view on differentiating tragedy from comedy cannot be applied to native stories and especially to Gerald Vizenor?s novels.
For Vizenor, the pleasure of ?pity? and ?fear? is an imitation of tragic victimry which denies the humor and wisdom in tribal culture and enhances the hegemony and dominance in history. To resist the closure of tragedy, Vizenor utilizes comic holotropes to rebel against the formal Western ideals of literary aesthetics as well as to defy notions of
concrete form. Narrated by two characters, Ronin Browne and Manidoo Envoy, Hiroshima Bugi is told in alternating chapters. The stories move between Ronin?s Hiroshima- obsession and Envoy?s points of view. By applying the experience of atomic destruction in Japan,Vizenor aims to pinpoint that the destruction caused by atomic bomb is comparable to the destruction of Native American culture which is as profound and devastating. With this
novel, Vizenor confronts the hypocrisy of war peace with humor and laughter and demonstrates that ?miseries can be overcome by humor and the honor of memorable stories? by means of comic holotropes.
Joseph Meeker suggests, ?The comic way is not always funny. Humor is sometimes a part of the comic experience, but humor is not essential to the meaning of comedy. Comedy is more an attitude toward life and the self,and a strategy for dealing with problems and pain.? Vizenor?s oppositional comedy as represented in Hiroshima Bugi mediates between worlds (past/present; Japan/Native Americans) and liberates the tribal consciousness from the dominance of closure with his
use of comic holotropes.
