ABSTRACT

A.S. Byatt’s “Morpho Eugenia” marks a significant moment in the consideration of (narrative) hospitality in neo-Victorian fiction. It expands on the concerns of neo-Victorianism by foregrounding the theme of hospitality in discourses that are central to the Victorian novel and to contemporary re-interpretations of Victorian culture. Among these are the trope of the visit to the family house in the English novel, in which guests are often then assimilated into the family, and the perils and threats to personal identity that come with the crossing of the threshold of hospitality. A third is the relationship with the ‘other’ in the un/conditional hospitality that is experienced by the protagonist. All of these sub-themes are contained in an epistemological dimension defined by science and religion, problematically interrelated at the time. This article thus considers the conceptual standpoint and the narrative strategies with which Byatt engages with the literary tradition of hospitality, from Homeric parallels through the nineteenth-century novel’s interest in self-identity, to the implications of the limits of knowledge and recognition of otherness. It also assesses the novella’s neo-Victorianism as a literary reimagining of the nineteenth-century world and examines its receptiveness to a post-structuralist questioning of traditional notions of hospitality.

摘要

AS Byatt的“ Morpho Eugenia”标志着新维多利亚时代小说（叙事）款待考虑中的重要时刻。它通过以维多利亚小说和当代对维多利亚文化的重新诠释为中心的话语中的待客主题，扩展了对新维多利亚主义的关注。其中包括英语小说中对家庭住宅的探访，其中常常将客人同化为家庭，以及跨越好客门槛带来的危险和对个人身份的威胁。第三个是主角在无条件招待中与“其他”的关系。所有这些子主题都包含在科学和宗教定义的认识论维度中，这在当时是有问题的相互联系的。因此，本文考虑了拜亚特（Byatt）涉足款待文学传统的概念立场和叙事策略，从荷马史密斯的相似之处到19世纪小说对自我身份的兴趣，再到知识极限和对异性的认识的隐含意义。它还将中篇小说的新维多利亚主义评价为对十九世纪世界的文学再现，并考察其对后结构主义对传统款待概念的质疑的接受程度。