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1、文学想象中的世界主义IntroductionMichael Ondaatje was born into the Burgher community of Dutch origin in 1943,Kegalle, Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon. Like his fiction, his ancestry is hybrid innature, with a mixture of Dutch, Sinhalese, and Tamil. At the age of eleven, he left forEngland to reunite with his
2、divorced mother. He immigrated to Canada in1962 topursue his college education, receiving his BA from the University of Toronto in 1965and his MA from the Queen’s University in 1967. The nomadism he experienced as achild and an adolescent cultivated in him an openness for difference and an emp
3、athyfor strangers.Ondaatje started off writing poems and first gained his literary reputation as apoet. He won great acclaim with the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 1970and 1979. His early books of poetry include The Dainty Monsters (1967), The Manwith Seven Toes (1969), and Rat Jelly
4、(1973). In 1970, he wrote a collage of poetryand prose, entitled The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-Handed Poems with thenotorious American outlaw being its protagonist, which won him his first GovernorGeneral’sAward.His first novel Coming Through Slaughter tells of the factual and fic
5、tional life ofNew Orleans jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden. Ondaatje published In the Skin of a Lion in1987, which re-writes the silenced history of the immigrant workers who had madehuge contribution in the building of Toronto from 1900 to 1940. Ondaatje explores theconfluence of culture from below and re
6、veals an early attempt to engage in thecultivation of cosmopolitanism in his literary imagination.In 1992, Michael Ondaatje became the first Canadian writer to garner the BookerPrize, the British Commonwealth’s highest literary honor for The English Patient(1992). It was adapted for the Academ
7、y Award winning movie under the same title.The novel explores a cast of four traumatized characters in the wake of the SecondWorld. The interactions between the four distinct characters initiate vital questionsconcerning the problem of solidarity and imperialism.Anil’s Ghost (2000) was written
8、 as a response to the Sri Lankan Civil War.Through a human rights investigation of a skeleton buried in a government-protectedpreserve, Ondaatje engages in the political discussion on the personal level, revealingthe urgent task of healing.The Cat’s Table (2011) has not yet received enough att
9、ention from scholars. Thisis partly because this novel is more of a collection of loosely connected vignettescentering on a maritime journey of a young boy named Michael. As a cosmopolitanBildungsroman, the novel dramatizes the construction of a cosmopolitan self andnavigates through the cultural an
10、d ideological disparity.Chapter One The Cosmopolitan Self in In the Skin of a Lion1.1 The Cosmopolitan SelfIn a world that is characteristic of transnational human interaction, whetherimposed or voluntary, societies are becoming increasingly multiple in their nature;(Hall 2002: 25). It is essential
11、for us to learn to navigate through difference andotherness given that nowadays nearly any fixed geographical space can be a milieu oftransnational interaction.Hall argues that the cosmopolitan self is the only kind of self that is adequate tothe current cosmopolitan environment:We need attachments
12、but each person can have a variety, a multiplicity of these at their command. They need to stand outside them, to reflect on themand to dispense with them when they are no longer necessary. And this is aview of the cosmopolitan self; (Hall 2002: 27).The main character Patrick is one such being whose
13、 identity remains uncertainwhen first introduced to readers. By creating a relatively root-less character, Ondaatjeexpounds the essential ambivalence regarding the formation of self in terms ofcultural roots and differences. Patrick constructs his identity as he interacts withpeople of difference, b
14、oth cultural and ideological. Hired as a searcher in Toronto inhis adulthood, he embarks upon a journey that transforms him entirely.Psychologically, Patrick’s self is a cosmopolitan self because he sees differences asopportunities to rather than problems. And more importantly he would eventua
15、llyshoulder moral obligations to others. George argues that when we look closer at theself that Patrick has formed interacting with people of different cultures and socialstatus, we see a self that has relinquished its solidity, identity and substantiality, wemay conceive the self at any given point
16、 in time as a hybrid’ (George 76).1.2 Cosmopolitanism from BelowDespite the fact that Ondaatje’s novels usually have global settings, he is oftenaddressed as a minority writer, which explains why critics like Mukherjee wouldcriticize Ondaatje because he has refused to address himself to
17、the particular needsof his community;. His eliding race’ as an element of his writing; (Sanghera 62)has fallen short of expectations for minority writers in general, especially for thosewhose countries are plagued by conflicts and wars. But is it fair to conclude thatOndaatje does not show any
18、 trauma of uprooting; (Sanghera 62) based on the factthat a particular post-colonial trauma does not prevail in his works? The question isnot hard to answer after we conduct a thorough reading of his works. During his longcareer, Ondaatje has only written one novel concerning the Sri Lankan Civil Wa
19、r. Hischaracters come from different cultural backgrounds. By doing so, Ondaatje intendsto address an up-rootedness from a broader perspective, instead of confining to hisown ethnicity and country of origin. It is true that his characters sometimes do notgrieve over the fact that they are thrown, ei
20、ther voluntarily or forced, into a world fullof strangers. They are preoccupied with using, if not taking advantage of, theopportunities of being placed among cultural differences. Despite the difficulties anddiscomforts these characters would run into among strangers, the presence of themhas the po
21、tential to be turned into an opportunity to enrich themselves through culturecontact.Chapter Three The Rooted Cosmopolitanism in Anil’s Ghost.743.1 Cosmofeminism.773.2 Doctor the Sweet Touch from the World. 853.3 Cosmopolitan Patriot. 91Chapter FourACosmopolitan Community in The Cat’s Ta
22、ble.984.1 Cosmopolitan Bildungsroman. 1004.2ACosmopolitan Self and a Cosmopolitan Community.112Chapter Four A Cosmopolitan Community in The Cat’sTableMichael Ondaatje’s latest novel, The Cat’s Table, was published in 2011. Thenovel is in fact a book written by the fictional charact
23、er Michael, sharing Ondaatje’sfirst name. At 11year-old, Michael embarks on a three-week journey from Colombo,Sri Lanka in the 1950s to London then later settles in Canada to become a writer.Given that Ondaatje himself also sailed from Sri Lanka to England as a young child toreunite with his m
24、other and went to Canada to become a writer, it seems tempting tocategorize the novel as an autobiography. However, Ondaatje makes it clear in theauthor’s note that novel uses the colouring and locations of memoir andautobiography; (CT 367), and it is fictionalfrom the captain and crew and all
25、 itspassengers on the boat down to the narrator; (CT 367). The story is only deceptivelyautobiographical.The novel on the surface is a collection of seemingly random vignettes centeringaround one or two major events happening on the ship: the death of the millionaireand the escape of the prisoner. O
26、ndaatje carries on the great tradition of TheCanterbury Tales of bringing people together on a trip where their personal stories areshared. Our understanding of the characters is highly sensual as we rely heavily onyoung Michael’s narrative. Michael does not always introduce character that hee
27、ncounters on the ship. From his perspective, the cast of adults at cat’s table arealmost mythic in terms of their personailty and identity. But the novel actually hasmultiple narrators: young Michael, the present-day Michael and a third-personnarrator, etc. Therefore, there will be typical Ond
28、aatje shifts between the past andpresent. Reader will occasionally follow the narrator off the ship years later after thejourney in London and Canada. The occasional shifts from scene to scene creates thenarrative fluidity and also the fluidity of the characters. Their identity and true figurevary a
29、nd mutate along the process. The reader has to constantly alter theirunderstanding of these chracters.ConclusionDrawing upon previous researches, this dissertation closely and systematicallyexplores the issue of cosmopolitanism in Michael Ondaatje’s four representativenovels, providing a new d
30、imension for Ondaatje’s study. The dissertation hasunraveled Ondaatje’s larger vision which transcends binary opposites of post-colonialstudies. Each chapter deals with a distinctive yet interconnected topic: the cultivationof cosmopolitan self in In the Skin of a Lion; rootless cosmopol
31、itanism in The EnglishPatient; rooted cosmopolitanism in Anil’s Ghost; a cosmopolitan Bildungsroman inThe Cat’s Table. The texts are studied in a chronological fashion as Ondaatje’scosmopolitan vision has been evolved with time. The ensemble of the four variationscreates a powerful
32、 polyphonic that offers us an alternative to approach differences asopportunities rather than problems to be solved. Ondaatje’s genuine concern for thehumanity as a whole is reflected in his consistent effort in the cultivation ofcosmopolitan empathy in his literary imagination.The first chapt
33、er examines the construction of the cosmopolitan self inOndaatje’s first cubist fiction In the Skin of a Lion. We have scrutinized theconstruction of subjectivity of Patrick, whose true identity remains intentionallynebulous in the beginning. The kind of self that Patrick forms in relation toi
34、nteractions with strangers is what Hall terms the cosmopolitan self;. Whileacknowledging the attachment to our cultural roots, the cosmopolitan self thatOndaatje creates is able to navigate through cultural confluences in societies that arebecoming increasingly multiple in their nature; (Hall 2008:
35、25). By building atension between Patrick’s inability to narrate and desire for conversation, Ondaatjeenhances the potential of interpersonal interactions and lays groundwork for thecultivation of empathy. By recreating the multicultural social milieu of Toronto in thehistoriography, Ondaatje expounds culture contact from below. Gaining his aestheticvision from the silenced and marginalized workers demonstrates his deep concern forand genuine appreciation of the poor.References (abbreviated)