著者

金谷 益道

出版者

同志社大学

雑誌

同志社大学英語英文学研究 (ISSN:02861291)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.79, pp.23-37, 2006-03

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ヘンリー・ジェイムズは"The Art of Fiction"で、小説の唯一の存在理由は「人生の再現」を企てることにあると示唆する一方で、小説の中で「人生の幻影」を作り出すことが小説家の仕事だとも主張する。ジェイムズは小説の虚構性を暴露し、「人生の幻影」を破壊しかねない作中での作者の介入を行うアンソニー・トロロープを非難し、「人生の幻影」を読者に与えるために小説家は歴史家の口調で語るべきだと主張している。ジェイムズは歴史や他の非虚構的作品にあると思われている、「既にあるもの」を忠実に再現するというミメーシス的再現形式こそが読者に「人生の幻影」を与え、小説の虚構性を隠蔽する助けとなると考えていた。ジェイムズがミメーシス的再現をする対象として選んだものは、作家のメトニミー的想像力により得られた人生の「印象」である。整理することなく頭の中で保持された人生の「印象」をまず頭の中で忠実に再現し、その再現した「印象」を書かれた文字によりテクストへもう一度忠実に再現するという度重なるミメーシスをジェイムズは目指したのである。ジェイムズはまた小説作成の法則化や小説の類型化・分類を拒んでいるが、これは彼が法則や類型という準拠しなければならない規範に従って生み出された小説は「因襲的で伝統的な型」を読者に意識させることになり、最後には小説の虚構性を露呈し、「人生の幻影」を破壊してしまうと考えていたからである。"The Art of Fiction" includes a succinct statement of Henry James's artistic credo: the "only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life." A quick glimpse of a situation, according to James, can give a novelist, endowed with the "power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern," impressions that allow him or her to "produce a life" in its complexity. While on the one hand James takes it upon himself to represent life in its complexity, he also sets great store by "the illusion of life." It is for this reason that James often criticizes Anthony Trollope's self-referential authorial intrusions, which expose the fictionality of fictional works and destroy "the illusion of life."James argues that "if [fiction] will not give itself away . . . it must speak . . . with the tone of the historian." Though many narratologists have argued that history is a representation in narrative form, we often think that there is no narrative form imposed by historians on their texts, or that they are immediately transcribing a pre-existing sequence of events. James makes use of this illusion of immediacy, or that of mimesis, to produce "the illusion of life." James makes it imperative not to impose upon "a personal . . . impression of life" the form that we often attribute to fictional works. As suggested in his argument that "[i]n proportion as in what [fiction] offers us we see life without rearrangement do we feel that we are touching the truth," James's purpose here is to produce "the illusion of life," or to achieve the effect of convincing the reader that the "life" they see is true. James also expresses his opposition to Walter Besant's attempt to formulate "laws of fiction." His objection is that these would conform all fictional works to "conventional, traditional moulds"—so conventional and traditional as to allow the reader to perceive the fictionality of the fictional works. James believes that his mimetic rendering of personal impressions will serve the purpose of preventing his works from being perceived as duplicates of "conventional, traditional moulds." However, as implied in his comment on Émile Zola, who, "[q]uarrelling with all conventions, defiant of them in general, . . . was yet inevitably to set up his own group of them," James¬ is also aware that this "art of fiction" will soon be regarded as one of "conventional, traditional moulds."