史蒂文森與毛姆來自太平洋的呼喚與回應

Robert Louis Stevenson and W. Somerset Maugham A Call and Response from the Pacific

本文探討英國作家威廉‧薩莫塞特‧毛姆的短篇小說系列如何與蘇格蘭作家羅伯特‧路易斯‧史蒂文森二十年前創作的類似小說形成某種文學回應。本文認為，兩位作者都記錄了太平洋地區及其部分區域在一八九〇年代至一九一〇年代的短暫時期內發生的劇烈變化。毛姆運用了史蒂文森早期小說中的一些人物比喻、場景設定甚至情節結構，並對其進行了改編，使其與一九一六年的世界觀相呼應。本文也探討了史蒂文森的小說在二〇世紀初西方作家如何看待和處理此類主題所發揮的重要意義。

This essay examines how the series of short stories by the English author W. Somerset Maugham appear to form a certain literary response to similar stories written twenty years earlier by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. In the process, it argues that both authors record how the Pacific and some of its communities have changed drastically over a short period of time, between the 1890s and the 1910s. Maugham does this by employing some of the character tropes, settings, and even plot structures of Stevenson’s earlier stories, giving them twists which make them relevant to the world he finds in 1916. It also establishes the significance of Stevenson’s stories in how western writers perceived and approached such subjects in the early twentieth century.