Contents
丛书序i
前言iii
Introduction1
Chapter One Comic Satire: Radical Criticism of the Debased Public Sphere39
Chapter Two Playful Double: Implicative Criticism of the Transnational Public Sphere92
Chapter Three Realistic Representation: Conservative Criticism of the Postmodern Public Sphere146
Conclusion200
References207
后记221
內容試閱：
Introduction
One of the facts partially accounting for the literary fame of Philip Roth 1933– is the simultaneity of his arguable Jewishness， previously questioned but ultimately accepted with new interpretation， and his arresting Americanness， embodied in from the communal sense to the national awareness and even the international reference. As a controversial as well as an enchanting figure， Roth stands in the field of Jewish-American literature with one hand clutching tightly the fertile Jewish soil and the other hand mining the rich material beneath the American land. Over a career spanning more than five decades， Roth has been among the center of the intellectual ferment of the second half of the twentieth century and received serious attention from a range of reading constituencies. Elbowing his way all through heavy-flinging condemnations and high-sounding commendations， Roth has finally established himself as an exuberant writer of great significance. Harold Bloom reaffirms that Roth is “centrally Jewish” because the pain of his protagonists is ultimately the result of the “incommensurability” between “a rigorously [Jewish] moral normative tradition” and “the reality of the way we live now” Bloom， 1986: 2. Roth， however， has never given up the effort to “climb[ing] over the ethnic fence” . As a Jew born in the new post-immigrant age where Goyish-Gentile conflict is no essential concern and a Jew experiencing his booming years in a politically and socially eventful era， Roth， like most of the Americans， cannot live without any political and social involvement in one way or another. As a man with extraordinary intellectual thinking， Roth， like all the other social realists， cannot live without self-conscious concern for and reflection on the public world. It is in Roth—the right person in the proper time—other than Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud that we find the greater possibility to reveal a self-conscious critical awareness of the Jewish-American writers.
A better understanding of Roth cannot be separated from the development of the Jewish-American literary history and the place wherein Roth is posited. The Jewish-American literature in the first half of the 20th century finds its manifestation in early immigrant experience， hardship， assimilation and problems inherent in the process， in the works of Abraham Cahan， Mary Antin， Anzia Yezierska， Michael Gold， Henry Roth and Nathanael West. Since the early fifties of the twentieth century the Jewish American writers have been placed in a prominent position in American literature ， among which the cooperative effort of the group headed by Bellow， Malamud， Roth could never be underestimated . From Bellow， “Jewishness moved in from the immigrant margins to become a new form of American regionalism” by naturalizing the immigrant voice Wisse， 2003: 205. Thus， Jewish-American literature greeted the arrival of its Renaissance with the location of itself in the representation of “the crisis of modernity: the need to construct a post-Holocaust humane society” among which the principal themes confronted are “the identity oppositions; the Jew as existential everyman; Jewish writing as the inheritor of modernism; the literature of rootless， nomadic contemplation; and the varieties of American experience” Fried， 1988: 3 other than the simple realistic description of the bewildering travails of immigrant Jews in a secular city.
It is difficult to fix Roth on a specific location in the Jewish-American literary history. Criticism can find him a novelist of close domestic observation， but also a writer immersed in international consciousness. In Roth one may discover vestiges of realism， and on the other hand he is notoriously metafictional in the widest sense. When his experimental enquiry about the old European Jewish home attracts much attention， it is easy for us to discover remnants of important Jewish American preoccupations in his works. Roth inherits both didactic realism and experimental modernism from the Jewish-American literary tradition and simultaneously absorbs postmodern innovation. From Saul Bellow， the Jewish-American fiction has been “avant-garde in its constructions， formulations， and basic focus on a renewed subject， a composite of a new struggling for consciousness which combines the ‘ethical Jewhood’ with the inner studies of the new-born Jewish identity within new American ideas of selfhood” Wade， 1996: 10. However， it is Roth that makes it avant-garde to the far-more-thorough-scale in the sense that in his works the post-Holocaust Jewhood is postmodernized and the private concerns are publicized， Americanized， and even internationalized. Thus， Roth is a far more important writer to show his readers that “how he wrote was as important as the contentious subjects he had always chosen” Wade， 1996: 12.
Though placed in the same battlefront with acclaimed authors as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud， Roth has produced a sub
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