想像家國：論《拓荒者》中的美國牧歌迷思

The Nation Imagined: The Myth of the American Pastoral in The Pioneers

庫柏是美國獨立後第一位真正反映本土文化的小說家，他在一八二三年出版的《拓荒者》不僅開啟了西部冒險故事的傳統，也是美國文化中邊境想像的基石。然而後世對庫柏的閱讀卻有極相左的看法，其中一派認為庫柏意在歌誦美國之新生、純真特質；但同時也有另一派則視庫柏為浪漫主義作家，對美國社會發展其批判意識。本文從牧歌思想在美國革命建國時期所扮演的意識型態支柱角色出發，探討庫柏在美國國族認同危機最嚴重時期，如何在《拓荒者》中藉由各種意識型態召喚策略來複製美國人牧歌之自我認同形象，以鞏固其新生、純真之國族認同。

James Fenimore Cooper is the first native novelist after the American independence. His The Pioneers, published in 1823, not only initiated American Western Literature, also brought the American frontier imagination into shape. Yet the critics' perception of Cooper seems to be divided into two extremes. Some of them see his works as glorification of American regeneration and innocence. Some others, by contrast, take him as a romanticist writer with a critical view of the American society. Departing from the role pastoralism played during the American Revolutionary period, this paper explores Cooper's ideological strategies in employing pastoralism for consolidating the American national identity of regeneration and innocence.