ABSTRACT While critics over the years have paid attention to Smith’s formalism, certain authoritative voices (I think in particular of J. M. Coetzee and Nadine Gordimer) focus on ideological aspects of her writing, which minimise or overlook its quality and its own particular character. If we could appreciate that Smith was writing within a modernist sphere of influence— however much filtered by her own sense of her specific abilities (and her compulsion to express those abilities)—it would be easier to read her as we tend to read other modernists. That is, we might once again read her in terms of writerly techniques used, and an aesthetic approach that absorbs into itself the patterns and tensions of existence, and which cannot simply be judged in terms of its colluding in various degrees with the forces of society. My article argues that ideological readings of Smith do her craftsmanship scant justice. As a corrective, I provide an overview of the formalist techniques she uses and the dense structuration involved in her presentation of her themes. Her formalism imbues the writing itself with a sense of its own agency, its own unique power, to the benefit of her fictional constructions.

中文翻译：

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宝琳·史密斯在《比德尔》中的形式主义

摘要 虽然多年来批评家一直关注史密斯的形式主义，但某些权威声音（我认为特别是 JM Coetzee 和 Nadine Gordimer）关注她写作的意识形态方面，这些方面最小化或忽视了其质量及其自身的特殊性格。如果我们能够理解史密斯是在现代主义的影响范围内写作——无论她对自己特定能力的感觉（以及她表达这些能力的冲动）过滤了多少——那么阅读她会更容易，因为我们倾向于阅读其他现代主义者. 也就是说，我们可能会再次阅读她所使用的写作技巧，以及一种将存在的模式和张力吸收到自身中的美学方法，不能简单地根据它与社会力量在不同程度上的勾结来判断。 . 我的文章认为，对史密斯的意识形态解读不够公正。作为纠正，我概述了她使用的形式主义技巧以及她在主题呈现中所涉及的密集结构。她的形式主义为写作本身注入了一种自己的能动性和独特的力量，有利于她的虚构结构。