文化詩學：口說故事、美國原住民口傳傳統和雅列希的《煙信》

Cultural Poetics: Storytelling, Native American Oral Tradition, and Sherman Alexie's ＂Smoke Signals＂

說故事是一個文學議題，也是一個文化議題。本文首先簡述現代以來故事的沒落和再生，並援引班雅明（Walter Benjamin）的短文〈說故事人〉（＂The Storyteller＂），討論說故事連結社群、仲介文化和溝通社會的特長。其次討論北美原住民口說故事的傳統，凸顯原住民口說故事的獨特形式和社群行為，形成社群說故事人的身分。最後探討第一部成功的美國原住民電影《煙信》（Smoke Signals, 1998），透過雅列希（Sherman Alexie）的詩學轉化，「口說故事」成為電影中兼具現代創意與傳統深度的一環。原住民說故事的建制，獨具美感，是語言行動，是文化傳承，也是社會行為。北美原住民以英文代言的現代創作帶來一個嶄新的視界，也給班雅明和巴克汀（Mikhail Bakhtin）所嚮往的口說故事時代一個活生生的見證。

Taking oral storytelling as a creative form with distinctive socio-cultural significances, this paper presents a comparative study of storytelling in both Western and Native North American cultural traditions, and then elucidates the cultural poetics of storytelling in the acclaimed Native American film ＂Smoke Signals＂, written and co-produced by Sherman Alexie. This paper first gives a general account of the fall and the revival of storytelling, and a feature study of storytelling as a communal experience theorized in Walter Benjamin's essay ＂The Storyteller.＂ The next part probes storytelling in Native North American oral traditions, studying its forms, performativity, cultural functions, and spiritual implications. This study complements the view of critics like Benjamin and Bakhtin that storytelling as a participatory communal experience is dead in Western society. The final sections present storytelling as a filmic feat of renovation in ＂Smoke Signals＂, in which Thomas Builds-the-Fire is cast as, not only ironically a babbling nuisance, but also positively a tribal storyteller. In this way, the paper elucidates how Native cultural poetics functions in a Native filmic production.