父權論述詩人？由詮釋學觀點看莎士比亞

Is Shakespeare a Patriarchal Bard? : A Hermeneutical Approach

Is Shakespeare a 'patriarchal bard'? The answer can be yes and no, and they can be both true. It depends on who the interpreter is and in what age the interpreter is. In the twentieth century, the central innovation in Hermeneutics is associated with the work of Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) and his student Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002). The general achievement they contribute to the modern hermeneutics is that they move the science of interpretation from the epistemological arena forward into the ontological ground. This means that understanding is neither conceived as dead object nor fixed knowledge, and we are not concerned with understanding something. Rather, something is grasped as our way of being-in-the-world, as the fundamental way we exist prior to any cognition or intellectual activity. Understanding is always 'concretization,' always includes application to the present, and thus produces an ongoing process of concept formation. Gadamer clearly points out our misunderstanding about the definition of the 'classical' as something old or something past or something dead. In fact, 'classical,' according to him, is 'through constantly proving itself (Bewahrung), allows something true (ein Wahres) to come into being.' The 'autonomy of reading' and the 'liveness of tradition' are what Gadamer asserts in his writing. This research is going to rely on Gadamer's conception of tradition with theory of interpretation in his magnum opus, Truth and Method, and some of the New Historic Literary School's current idea about history for support to read and interpret Shakespeare's comedies towards finding the answer of his being accused as a 'patriarchal bard' by some modern interpreters. Besides the patriarchal power expressed in the titles, structures, contents of his plays, Shakespeare's characterization of women in them also attracts lots of denunciation. Women's disobedience was naturally identified as causes of disorder or crisis. Women's subordination becomes insurance of the recovery of order, the necessarily formulaic guarantee of the comic conclusion. The absence or exclusion of mothers, the passiveness or silence of women, the subordination or reconciliation of women as comic conclusion, and the disguise of women as men to hide their identity to turn around the crisis are all the irrefutable evidences of women being excluded, disabled, subordinated, oppressed, subdued, marginalized, demeaned, and disenfranchised. It will be pointed out that patriarchy is not a slogan smuggled in from the 20th or 21st century and imposed on the plays but an exact term for the social structure that close reading reveals within the plays.莎士比亞是父權論述詩人嗎？答案可以是「是」也可以是「非」，且兩者皆正確。要看誰是詮釋者及詮釋者所在的年代而定。二十世紀詮釋學最主要的變革源自於海德格（Heidegger）及高達默爾（Gadamer）兩位詮釋學大師。他們最主要的貢獻是將詮釋學由釋經學傳統的「認識論」範疇轉變為「存有論」的普遍哲學。也就是「理解」本身不是沒有生命的物品，也不是一成不變的知識，而是依我們存在於世界上的方式不同，事物讓我們自然領會了，我們的存在是在一切認知理解行動之前發生的。「理解」一直都是將知識「具體化」，應用到現在，因此是一個不間斷的觀念形成的過程。高達默爾（Gadamer）明確地指出我們將「經典」與「古典」誤解為「過去和沒有生命」的錯誤。事實上，據他了解，「經典」與「古典」是觀念形成的過程中，「不斷地證明自己而允許真理自形呈現」。「閱讀自主」及「靈活傳統」皆是高達默爾（Gadamer）作品中的重要論述。本研究將以高達默爾（Gadamer）的巨著《真理與方法》及新歷史主義學說對「歷史」的新觀念為基礎，再次閱讀及詮釋莎士比亞的喜劇作品，進而找出莎翁被一些現代評論家指控為「父權論述詩人」的理由。除了父權明顯呈現於莎翁喜劇作品的標題、結構及內容中，他對劇本或故事中的女性人物的性格描述，也招致不少批評。女性的不服從，自然被掛上「導致社會失序或危機」的罪名，女性的服從，變成了社會恢復秩序及喜劇達到制式圓滿結局的保證。劇中人物的失恃、母親的缺席、女性的沉默和消極、女性的妥協成快樂的結局、女性變裝男性為扭轉危機的唯一方法等等皆在在顯示女性被排斥、被減弱、被制服、被壓抑、被迫害、被{^A909^}load