| As a contemporary Jewish American writer,Philip Roth is honored as the "living literary legend"(3L).Since the appearance of his first novella Goodbye,Columbus in 1959,Roth wrote more than 30 works successively,including novels,short stories,non-fiction,collections of critical essays,and so on.The publication of "Zuckerman Series" further establishes Roth’s position in the literary world.As Roth writes about the conflicts,between Jewish decendants and their parents,many critics tend to interpret Roth’s works from the perspective of transgression,but very few have attempted to combine trauma,subjectivity and pain in their interpretations.In fact,the writing of different types of trauma and subjectivity embodies abundant cultural and ethical implications.The complicated relations between subjectivity and ethics in particular are fully displayed in Roth’s novels.Ethical narrative and narrative ethics are two concepts that emerged recently in studies of foreign literature notably being frequently used by the practice of literary ethical criticism in which narrative and ethics are often handled.The former mostly focuses on narrative techniques,while the latter elucidates "how to narrate",and "why narrate this way".Compared with the study of "ethics",both undertakings have placed more emphases on "narrative".The same occasion occurs in most of trauma narratives.Roth’s creative techniques can be compared as "kaleidoscope".But the trauma narrative ethics of Roth’s novels is slightly different,covering two levels:"narrating" and "story",that’s to say,dividing the word "narrative" into Chatman’s sense of "discourse" and "story",without equaling with the simple "lay out" of the two.Roth’s fictional texts modulate the relations between such factors as author,narrator,character,reader,and the act of narrating,and endow traumatic stories with abundant moral meanings and literary merits.Based on the theoretical framework of Cathy Caruth,Judith Herman and Dominick LaCapra’s trauma theories,this dissertation focuses on three types of subjectivity(hysterical subjectivity,postmodern subjectivity and textualized subjectivity)with reference to the basic concepts in literary ethics.It selects nine of Roth’s most representative novels for discussion.In relation to the level of family,holocaust and American nationalism,they are namely When She Was Good,Portnoy’s Complaint,My Life as a Man,The Ghost Writer,The Counterlife,Operation Shylock,American Pastoral,I Married a Communist,and The Plot Against America.This dissertation delves into the interactive relations between subjectivity and ethics upon each other in Roth’s novels mentioned above by examining three levels of ethical dimensions,representations and measures that incorporate family,holocaust and nationhood.My undertaking tries to showcase the transitions of Roth’s ethical thoughts from his doubts about traditional family ethics in the early writing to his claiming of ethnic ethical identity as an American Jew in the middle phase,and further to his "the other" ethical rethinking in the later period.The main body of this dissertation consists of three chapters.Chapter One explores the dialectics in family,the basic social unit,of some basic ethical concepts"dimensions,like "goodness","love","duty" and ethical identity,as well as "marriage" and modern ethical problems such as "abortion",and subjectivity,in When She Was Good,,Portnoy’s Complaint,and My Life as a Man.Through the display of childhood and marriage trauma,with their destructive consequences,Roth attempts to pursue a kind of new understanding and interpretation of modern family ethical thoughts.Questioning the traditional moralities,these early family ethical novels also take the complicated and paradoxical,ethical relations between perpetrators and victims in family into consideration.Roth has realized that facing traumatic situations,what kind of reactions victims make("hysteria" must make things worse)is of great importance.The modes of individual responses to trauma at the family level are further expanded and demonstrated in Roth’s holocaust trauma novels in his middle career.Chapter Two mainly discusses The Ghost Writer,The Counterlife and Operation Shylock.Borrowing the concepts "acting out" and "denial(or evasion)" from LaCapra’s trauma theory,this chapter analyzes the existed "(over-)remembering" and"(blindly)forgetting" on the Jewish holocaust issue,from which ethical representative forms developed in America:double ethical choices,"Zionism" and "Diasporism".To the victims and perpetrators alike,"acting out" or/and "denial" not only cannot deal with trauma effectively,but unavoidably will bring about a series of ethical problems.How to treat the relations between past present and future is the core to working through trauma.Roth differs himself from other Jewish American writers like Malamud and Saul Bellow in his different understanding of "remembering" and"forgetting".To a certain extent,Jewish holocaust trauma writing within postmodern trauma narrative framework is Roth’s counterpunch to his early "anti-Semitic"accusations.Roth prominently expresses his construction of Jewish American ethical identity in working through trauma,by way of(non)-substitutive subjectivity,and in the understanding of the double effects of memorializing holocaust,the function of parody and mimetics associated with the icon of Anne Frank,and the attitude on the issue of diaspora,of unswerving American stand,while remembering the Jewish origin and so on.Fusing "remembering" with "forgetting",Roth attempts to find a kind of balance between "saying" and "silence".Chapter Three measures the "foregrounding" histories:the essence of "tragedy"in the sixties,McCarthyistic paranoid style of politics in the fifties,as well as the fear of the intended "American Jewish holocaust" practised by anti-Semitic Lindburgh within alternative history in the forties the same as that in 9/11 disaster,and discloses subjectivity and ethics embodied in them through imagining subject’s shattered subjects,farcical performances,and progression of Americanization.The prominence of Roth lies in his way of historicizing ethical narrative technique.In so doing,he combines individual and collective,fictional and factual,grand narrative and petit recit,as well as literary texts and social texts.His later works elucidate Roth’s concerns with American realities and politics,showcasing America before and after 9/11.Adopting the way of "empathy unsettlement",proposed by LaCapra,it is possible for fictional narrator to take the ethical textualized trauma subject’s stand,without having to displace his position.Transcending ethnic fences,in his later novel creation,Roth further notices that also as cultural trauma,traumatic historical events at the American national level have the same "overwhelming" aftermath.Roth aims to make profound,ethical rethinking of the existential circumstances of marginalized Jewish "the other" within the shadow of national trauma.From his question of tradition,to his care of double identities,and to his reflection on ethics of "the other",Roth manifests in his novels the interaction between subjectivity and ethics.Based on the discussion of subjectivity and ethical introspections,this study tries to expand the critical horizon of Roth studies,offering references for the study of his contemporary American writers and their works. |
