A Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns`s Tam o`Shanter

Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities,
NCHU, 33 (2003, 6) : 425-439
A Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns ’s
Tam o ’Shanter
Kuan-jong Cheng*
Abstract
“
Mi組iail
Bakhtin repeatedly maintains in Dialogic Imα！gination and Rabelais and His
World that the folk humor inherent in carnival had forfeited its full and resource l
meanings since the sixteenth cen個可﹒ He especially points out that a full-fledged
carnival spirit is expressed in terms of grotesque realism, a theory that he uses to
decipher most of the difficult images in Gargantua and Pantagruel written by the
sixteenth French writer Francois Rabelais. Down to the Romantic age, the Romanticists
were unable to 訂ticulate the original meanings of grotesque realism, because they
persisted to “express fe訂 of the world and seek to inspire their reader with this fear. ”
This paper on 由e one hand is to read Tam o 'Shanter by Robert Burns, one of the
Romantic poets, in the light of Bakhtin’s idea. On the other, it also examines the ghost
tale in various perspectives of drunkenness, ambivalence, use of rhetoric, and the
narrating to prove that it is not only fear that this work has tried to provoke, but also the
Scottish local folk humor that it tries to say.
Key words: ambivalence (
可
carnival （嘉年華）
folk humor （民
• Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Chung Hsing
University
425
2
Kuan-jung Cheng
俗）
喧嘩）
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
grotesque realism （怪誕寫實主義）
local knowledge （在地知輯）
heteroglossia （眾聲
polyglossia （多元聲音）
Among his Romantic contemporaries, Robert Bums was all in all a Scottish
vernacular poet, and this characteristic was faithfully illustrated in his
long-termed collection of Scottish folk songs as well as his composition of poems.
To put it in another w呵，
Bums
had dedicated his life and passion to reviving the
Scottish culture by employing dialect in both of his composition of poems and
folk songs. In this dedication, Bums had nursed a pungent sense of vernacular or
“ local knowledge” l that enabled him on the one hand to be the spokesperson and
safeguard of Scottish culture, and on the other the advocator of the aestheticism
of the local culture.
to
his 企iends
Tenaciously insisting the pride of his culture, Bums wrote
in one of these letters, remarking that
me to death”(Alan Bold 81). These few words spoke volumes.
his disliking of the English song ’s melody, tune, and lyrics.
They disclosed
But deep beneath
this disliking, Bums had cultivated an unyielding reconciliation with the
dominant position of English which became nation-wide official language in
1707.2 Under this circumstance, Bums had kept pouring his ideas and feelings
1
2
This term is from anthropologist Clifford Geertz ’s Local Knowledge, meaning that to undergo a
full understanding of either a tribe or a society, one has to engage in the observation and
presentation of the related details so that a sort of local knowledge can be obtained. See
Clifford Geertz, Local Knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
Due to the crowning of James VI and I and with the Union of Crowns the Scottish court
followed the king to London, English became official. The king himself began using English
to write poet句， and this initiated other Scottish writers to follow the royal example. According
to Alan Bold, “ with the parliamentary Act of Union, 1 May 1707, English became the official
language of Scotland as well as England" (83). See Alan Bold 's A Burns Companion (New
York, St. Martin ’s Press, 1991 ).
426
A
Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns’sTam o ’Shanter
3
out, using large proportion of Scottish dialect and few of the official language to
demonstrate his sense of Scottish folk humor.
Examined more
closel弘 Bums ’s
employment of dialect and of folk materials was both politically and culturally
strategic to retain what he thought as Scottish literariness whose unique stroke
contrast with English when it was proclaimed officially legitimate.
Nevertheless,
his spooky folk tale Tam o ’'S hanter revealed more than what Bums had originally
devised; the work was inherent with Mikhail Bakhtin's idea of grotesque realism,
though not completely fitted in the definition.
It is thereby in this scenario, this
paper would examine the grotesque residue in Tam o ’'Shanter, and simultaneously
the uniqueness of folk humor that belongs to Romanticism alone. 3
Tam o ’'Shanter was apparently a conversion of Scottish folk tale, a tale that
told the protagonist all time drunk Tam, after finishing his market business and
making his way back home, witnessed and experienced a grotesque dancing party
in which the participants were withered hags, deformed wizards, and dead bodies.
The more detailed exploration is made upon the text, the more grotesque reveals.
Based upon this exploration, this paper thus examines Tam o 'Shanter
perspectives; they
are 企om
drunkenness,
f全om
from ambivalence, and from rhetoric.
企·om
five
narrating voice, from metonymy,
By doing so, I hope what so-called
grotesque of the folk humor could be brought to the fore.
First of all, Tam was introduced to the reader that he was a good-for-nothing;
he was always drunk around the clock, around the year.
blustering, drunken blellum;I
3
That 仕的 November
Tam was “A blethering,
till October,/ Ae market-day
Bakhtin, in his Rabelais and His World (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1984), argues
that the Medieval folk humor inherent in carnival had in many ways undergone a
transformation of content and meaning through the 16曲， thel7叭 thel81h, and the Romantic
period. The abundantly resourceful carnival images had been suffering from the oppression of
pedantic conservatives, especially in the 18th centu可﹒ Down to the Romantic age,“the image
of Romantic grotesque usually express fear of the world and seek to inspire their reader with
this fear" (39)
427
4
Kuan-jung Cheng
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
thou was nae sober ... (105).4
On market days, Tam was not able to remain sober
to run his business, according to the narrating voice who
from Tam ’s wife Kate.
in 仙m
quoted words
Even at church, Tam was also drinking:
Lord ’s house, even on Sunday,/ Thou drank wi' Kirkton Jean till Monday. ”
drunkard was so impenetrable but also so exterior. 5
This
Tam ’s impenetrability was
showed by his defiance to God ’s teactiing in His temple, a defiance Kate through
the voice of the narrator prophesized that a punishment would take place in the
form of death, either by drowning or by being caught by the “ warlocks in the
mirk. ”
It seemed that Tam was staying in a
s仙por
situation because of incessant
drinking, yet this stupor constituted Tam ’s whole personality rather than a part of
it, and paradoxically this personality denied the access of both Kate ’s and the
reader ’s comprehension.
On the other hand, Tam ’s exteriority was also so simple to Kate ’s and the
reader's understanding.
Kate realized that her husband would never change until
death bell should toll him, or to put it more precisely, until death should mark a
symbolic resurrection, so did the reader.
The drinking distilled Tam into a state
of stupor which made Tam able to weather the storm and brave the haunted “ kirk’,:
“ Wi ’ tippeny, we fear nae evil ;I Wi' usquabae (whisky), we face the devil! ”
Tam
justified his intoxication by saying that with cheap alcohol he was ready to face
any devils, an act that every drunkard was inclined to do.
Tam turned his back to, but to the devil he was now
prep訂ing
So it was God that
to stand in front of
Whether Tam was impenetrable or exterior, his drunkenness conveniently
4
All the quotations are all from Poems of Robert Burns by Gramercy Books (New York: Avenel,
1994).
5
This term was used by Bakhtin to criticize those characters who remain the same throughout the
novel and show their interior feelings by exaggerating gesture or behavior. That was why
Achilles ’s cry could be heard all over the battle field. See Bakhtin's The Dialogic
Imaginagtion (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981). p133.
428
A
Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns’sTam o ’Shanter
5
entitled Burns to describe or state those supernatural encounters that had been
forbidden to tell in the neo-classical age when duty, reason, and public welfare
were its major concern.
Tam, the drunkard, was immune to these concerns.
Tam was, on the contrary, forgot his duty as husband and a business man, upset
family value, ignored the possibility of reason, and finally bordered upon the
dividing line between publicity and privacy.
It seemed
th的 the
eighteenth century family values were disrupted by Tam
who would never go back home and had dinner with his family until he had
enough drink.
Kate was outrageous with Tam’s attitude, and her constant
nagging probably was the wedge that drove them apart, though it was never
clearly stated in the poem.
However, their discrepancy was apparent.
And it
was rendered furthermore obvious when the relationship between Tam and
his mare, was taken into consideration.
M嗯，
Also, a metonymical substitution of
Cutty-Sark with Kate made the discrepancy all the more carnivally interesting.
As a drunkard, Tam was naturally marginalized by the dominant social value,
yet this
m缸ginality
kept obscuring the
bound訂y
between it and the center.
The
obscurity act could be detected in the stormy night when Tam planted himself
“ unco right;I Fast by an ingle (fireplace),” drinking divinely, sharing jokes and
secrets with
his 企iends
and the hostess of the ale house.
A
gathering was illustrated, and Tam was right in the picture.
the undefined
drinking 仕iend
very 句pical
family
For a short while,
was his family and the hostess was his wife.
In
other words, Tam had en oyed the family atmosphere to his heart ’s content, but
the ale house was only a temporary lodging; it was not a home.
The interesting
point here was if Tam could make himself at home at the ale house, he might as
well stay overnight since a howling storm was raging outside.
chose to hit the road and make his way back home.
Instead, Tam
This all time drunkard did
not totally disregard of his wife and his home somewhere beyond the haunted
church.
In a word, this
m缸ginal
character, though most of the times remained
careless about his home, somehow paradoxically showed his concern in a subtle
429
6
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
Kuan-ju時 Chen
way.
So now Tam was mounting his gray mare, Meg,“Despising wind, and rain,
and fire ’” making his way back home in the middle of the night.
As Tam
proceeded onward, the only thought that flashed across his mind was the haunted
“ Kirk-Alloway’,;
and Kate at this moment was metonymically replaced by the
devil woman Cutty-Sark.
The metonymical replacement implicitly indicated
that home was to his unconsciousness not a pleasant place, and Kate was both a
nagging hag and a new enlisted young female devil who kept “ the country-side in
,'’
fear because she had shot many beasts to death and destroyed many sturdy boats.
Cutty-Sark dressed finely and she could dance
dazzling旬， and
bewitched,“And thought his very een (eyes) enriched. ”
that made Tam
Tam was therefore “ tint
(lost) his reason” altogether and stood up, roaring out at the same time “ Weel
done, Cutty-Sark !”
instant.
At this exclamation, the whole kirk became dark in an
Tam lost his reason, now he regained it; he had to take to his heels and
Meg must shake its gray tail as much as possible to try to
escape 企om
the devils.
As Tam and Meg ran for their lives, the pursuing devils cried aloud “ catch the
thiefl ”
Cutty-Sark was not a bright dame as Tam had thought and seen any longer.
She was furious because of being peeped and the. fury instantly transformed her
into a fierce devil.
Also, the
h可 echoed
with Kate ’s sullenness.
home-coming; rather, Tam was regarded as a thief, an intruder.
It was not a
The intrusion
was paradoxically interesting because literally the haunted church was not
originally occupied by the
the main part of it.
supematur祉， it
belonged to the natural, and human was
Now that the church was
usu中ed,
the human became
unnatural in the eye of the supernatural; that is, human became a thief.
In the
metonymical sense, the symbolic home-coming was not welcome by Kate who
had decided to deem her husband an outsider or even an intruder.
A total
collapse of idyllic life was thus pinpointed by a drunkard husband and a repulsive
wife.
It announced the end of the eighteenth century family ideal, yet trumpeted
430
A
Romantic Grotesque: Robert Bums’sTam o ’Shanter
7
in the meanwhile the establishment of a new social structure in which a man was
supposed to stay outside running around to make enough financial income to
support his family, and the woman was to be domestic-bound to take care of
children and manage the household chores.
Seen at this, Tam o ’Shanter seemed
to be standing at the axis of two ages, one was the idyllically agricultural society,
the other the industrial society based upon the practices of capitalism.
Tam, the
drunkard, deconstructed all these ; he was semantically both/and.
In the pursuit, Tam heard the sound made by the chasers were like “ bee bizz
ang可 fyke. ”
out wi'
The
bees were used to be as a metaphor of devils, an
incongruity that evoked sense of fun in the mind of the reader.
However, the
sense of incongruity became undefinable in th,e effort to identify who was the
one--Cutty-Sark or the hag-- that clutched Meg ’s rump, leaving the poor mare
“ scarce
a stump. ”
Again in the metonymical sense, just as Kate
was 剖 once
Cutty-Sark and the hag, unfixed, so was Tam serving both a denial to the
eighteenth century family value and a support to a new family structure based
upon the prevalence of capitalism.
Another metonymy was based upon the relationship between Tam and
his mare.
M唔，
At the end of the story when the narrating voice remarked that every
man should keep in mind what Cutty-Sark had done to Tam ’s mare whenever he
was inclined to drink and have fun.
The tale ended here without telling the
reader whether Meg was still alive or not, but Tam who had successfully escaped
the devil ’s clutch was apparent.
It could be that Tam was totally dead like those
dead bodies displayed around the devil ’s dancing party, because Meg had been
seriously hurt let alone Tam.
But this possibility was low.
Rather, Bums left
the tale unfinished, leaving as many possibilities as possible to the reader to think
them over.
So it was the animal that suffered its master ’s convivial way of life,
not the hero himself.
In the metonymic position, Meg was in place of Tam, yet
in the earlier scene when Tam was drinking divinely, Meg was nowhere in the
scenario.
Now Tam was to continue his
li缸， a
431
life that would run afoul to Kate ’s
8
Kuan-jung Cheng
wish or the
na叮ator
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
’s advice.
Tam did not have to nurse any inclination to lead
such a life; rather, he was the very embodiment of the conviviality.
It was in this
sense that Tam remained intact, a static figure or a man of exteriority.
The elaboration upon metonymy merited in the meanwhile our attention to
the ambivalence of the narrating voice and the usage of different rhetoric as well.
At the outset, the story was told in a strict moral tone, building up an atmosphere
that temperance was beneficial, foreshadowing at the same time the hero Tam was
everything a drunkard could be.
However, the strict tone became mellow and
even ambivalent in its description of Kate, Tam and Tam ’s adventure.
Together
with the exploration upon the usage of different tones of rhetoric, the narrator
became all the more sophisticatedly ambivalent.
So the different tones of rhetoric in the delineation of the fleeting of time and
of Tam’s adventure were of some interests.
It seemed that the juxtaposition of
Scottish dialects and the formal literal rhetoric did not reduce the grotesque
atmosphere.
On the
contra旬， it
thickened it.
The Scottish dialect was all the
way down ungrammatically and semantically unrecognizable right in the middle
of the presentation of Cutty-Sark’s and hag ’s behavior; also, in the pursuit scene
when Tam and Meg running toward the stone bridge.
In the process, a sense of
polyglossia and of hetroglossia were separately revealed. 6
A classical rhetoric was used to describe the fleeting of good time, a time
that Tam spent in the ale house:
But pleasures are like poppies spread,
6
According to Bakht妞， polyglossia means the situation in which a native language should
receive some rhetoric or usage 企om foreign languages so that it may always refresh itself as
time goes by.
Hetroglossia, on the other hand, means different viewpoints presented in a novel through
different voices, and these di質erent voices are always engaging in a dialogue with each other.
See The Dialogic Imagination
432
A
Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns ’s Tam o 'Shanter
You seize the
floweζits
9
bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white-then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit pre you can point their place ;
Or like the rainbow ’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.
( 106-107)
Images used in the above quoted lines ranged from poppy flower to the rainbow
which vanished in the midst of storm.
The storm foreshadowed the subsequent
lines which dissolved the formal pattern gradually into a scene in which the
shrewdly-biting cold wind together with the pouring rain and the thunderous bolt
lighting were presented in Scottish dialect:“The wind blew as ‘tward blawn its
last;I The rattling showers rose on the blast. ”
the
lightning were
The night storm, the pouring, and
all recognizable.
Onward,
the
short journey
t。
“Kirk-Alloway’, was also readable and comprehensible, even Tam ’ s little fear at
the sight of the devils' dancing party was checked by the alcoholism in him.
In
the bizarre scene, several corpses were displayed at the other side of the lot, and
the narrating voice at this moment began aware of the horror exhibition of
carcasses; it muttered “ even to name wad be unlawful. ”
However, the muttering
voice became speaking in a drunken tone, describing if those withered hags in
greasy flannel had been girls in snow-white clean linen the speaker would give
them his bottom.
In so saying, the
na口ator
moral route he had been on for a while.
here apparently
deviated 企om
the
Subsequent to this, he resumed his
moral vision and cast his own serious look at the dancing witches, now they were
“ withered beldams,
auld and droll,/ Rigwordie hags wad spean a foal,/ Lowping
and flinging on a crummock,/ I wonder didna tum thy stomach."
thena叮ator,
It seemed that
though most of the times stood for the family value on behalf of Kate,
spoke in an official tone in the scene of describing the fleeting of pleasure time,
433
1O Kuan-jung Cheng
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
and held sarcastic attitude toward Tam ’s seemingly drunken darings, he
nevertheless was fascinated by what he had witnessed, saying that he might as
well offer his bottom to those witches just “ for ae blink o' the bonie burdies !”
The exclamation mark emphasized his decision.
Also, the scene in which skinny
withered hags were dancing was so disgusting that it upset narrator ’s stomach.
Feeling the sick impact of the scene, the narrator ’s words kept coming out without
worrying about was it lawful or not to name it.
The incoherence in his narration
points out a fact that the two narrating tones were not self-contradictory, but stood
for different views and were having a dialogue, at once introducing the formal
rhetoric and its value and welcoming the “ vulgar” Scottish dialect in the persona
of Tam and the description of his adventure.
The inserting of these
pleasure-description lines was to represent the good divine time.
On the other
hand, these lines turned into the object of representation; that is, they became the
represented object.
This is what Bakhtin has called a dialogue.
The dialogue
validated the existence of heterogloss間， while the juxtaposition of formal English,
a foreign language in Bums ’s eye, and the Scottish dialect proved another
existence of polyglossia.
So the dialogue made the whole tale unfinished in that
it became obscure if the narrator was really taking Tam to a moral task, because it
was Meg the mare that received the devil ’s clutch rather than Tam.
In other
words, Tam was still at large and the text was thereby unfinished, a phenomenon
of grotesque realism.
Mi組iail
Bakhtin repeatedly maintains both in Rabelais and His world (1984)
and The Dia/ogic Imagination (1981) that the nature of the folk humor is
open-ended, full of such images as laughter, birth, death, eating, drinking,
defecation, sex, etc.
It is thereby unofficial, dynamic, and vital.
Bakhtin
further argues that the real folk humor is pre-class; that is, there once was a time
that folks were living a camivalesque life which obscured the boundary between
the real world and the carnival festival world, class consciousness was abolished.
The camivalesque was exhaustedly illustrated in terms of grotesque realism
434
A
Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns’s 品m o ’Shanter
according to Bakhtin.
11
The grotesque realism, nevertheless, had suffered
transformations in the climate of conservative ages ; these transformations were
either out of misunderstanding or due to the reshuffling of the social structures.
In his comment of the mock-hero deployment, Bakhtin maintained that
Rabelais’s grotesque realism could exhaustedly examine it.
according to Bakhtin, was
t。” seek
Grotesque realism,
to grasp in its meaning the very act of
becoming and growth, the eternal incomplete unfinished nature of being.
Its
images present simultaneously the two poles of becoming: that which is reducing
and dying, and that which is being born; they show tow bodies in one, the
budding and the division of living cell ” (Rabelais 52).
The essence of the
grotesque realism was carnival, an idea that Bakhtin used to celebrate everything
that was unofficial, degrading, and was concerned with bodily pleasures such as
eating, drinking, laughing, copulating, defecting, farting, and
of everydayness.
eveη吃hing
In carnival, even death promised rebirth; hell
that was
was 企olically
delightful.
Our hero Tam was a static figure without showing any act of becoming and
growth; yet he was ”the eternal incomplete unfinished nature of being’” a truth
that also validated the tale’s deployment of its ambivalence nature. 7 However in
his critique of Romantic grotesque, Bakhtin claimed that both "pre-Romanticism
and Romanticism witnessed a revival of the grotesque genre but with a radically
transformed meaning.
It became the expression of subjective, individualistic
world outlook very different from the expression of the carnival folk concept of
previous ages, although still containing some carnival elements" (38).
Ba尬tin
thought that carnival belonged to the popular, and was dynamic, vital, becoming
and full of folk humor.
7
”Transformed
meaning" meant that the Romantic
The idea of ambivalence is ve可 integral to the understanding of grotesque realism which
celebrates
everything that is not fixed, completed, and finished. See Bakhtin ’s Rabelais and His World
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
435
12
Kuan-jung Cheng
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
grotesque had forfeited the full meaning of the sixteenth century grotesque
realism.
And he further remarked that ’,the world of Romantic grotesque is to a
certain extent a terrifying world, alien to man ”( 38).
due
t。”the
This
”terri命ing
world" was
Romanticists present the devil as terrifying, melancholy, and tragic,
and infernal laughter as somber and sarcastic" (41 ).
darkness contributed to the making of this
”teηifying
It was unclear
th剖 if
world’” yet Bakhtin said
that the Romantic grotesque was in most cases nocturnal.
Subsequently, he
”
added The image of Romantic grotesque usually express fear of the world and
seek to inspire their reader with this fear" (39).
These comments made by Bakhtin upon Romantic grotesque are partially
applicable to the reading of Tam o ’Shanter.
A nocturnal
terri冉ring
world was
presented in the scene of Kirk-Alloway; however, a marrying picture was also in
The devils indeed did provoke fear in Tam who recited “some
the scenario.
Scots sonnet" when approaching near the haunted place lest some hobgoblins
should catch him unprepared.
But a drunkard ’s fear could never be a fear.
Rather, it was less fear in Tam than paradox and ambivalence in the reader.
“ Scots sonnet
’,
was used at that critical moment as an incantation to exorcise any
invisible devils by a drunkard.
The holiness of Scriptural words was assumed by
“ Scots sonnet" or the sonnet was endowed with the holiness so that it was capable
of exorcising. Was it a gesture of degradation or a promotion of “ Scots sonnet?”
In effect, it “ inspired” not a feeling of fear in the reader but a feeling of
ambivalence.
The haunted place where Tam burst into was at the first sight
“terri句ring,
melancholy, and tragic ’” but those devils were exercising a new dance from
France, turning a typical hell scene into a joyful one.
upside down.
It was a world turned
Moreover, the image of hags though withered and ugly, yet the
dance they were engaging in enabled them with a sense of life and of vitality.
No wonder there subsequently popped up a young bright dame Cutty-Sark whose
dance was so eye-catching and fascinating that Tam forgot where he was.
436
Those
A Romantic Grotesque: Robert Bums ’s Tam o ’'Shanter
hags were, in
Ba蛤tin's
13
viewpoint,“old hags” who “ are laughing ... .It is pregnant
with death, a death that gives birth.
There is nothing completed, nothing calm
and stable in the bodies of those old hags”(25).
On the page where Bakhtin critiqued that the image of Romantic grotesque
was to inspire their reader with fear, he, in the succeeding sentence, concluded
that “ the images of folk culture are absolutely fearless and communicate this
fearlessness to all”(39).
Tam, as a layman, symbolized the folk character, a
character not of total fearlessness but a mixture of fear,
s削por,
and passion.
Again, it was this ambivalence that Bakhtin had invariably celebrated, because
“ bare negation is completely alien to folk culture" (11).
The tale is not all about
the bad side of drinking and devils, it delivers some meaning beyond Bakhtin’s
observation about Romantic grotesque.
It is true that this Scottish tale does not exhaust the definition of grotesque
realism, yet it retains some of the most essential part of it.
paper all about?
But is this what this
The question should be posed is “ what is folk humor?”
Bums successfully introduce the Scottish folk humor into this tale?
Did
If he did,
the local knowledge he had nursed did e旺ectively nourish the Scottish folk humor
and
solidi命 the
folk culture.
If he did not, this
ghost 個le
should suffer
ignorance, and the inherent resourceful multi-layered meanings were likewise
suppressed and thus disparaged as nonsense.
In the light of Bakht妞，s carnival idea, we definitely agree that Bums had
succinctly created a folk hero who was unique yet simultaneously so familiar to
his Scottish folk people.
So it seemed that the folk humor was embodied in
Tam ’s crossing the stream Doon, a symbolic crossing of the Styx toward the death
realm.
And after a little while, he was hurrying toward the stone bridge with a
bunch of devils chasing after; the stone bridge was a symbolic threshold that
devils dare not cross, but supposedly to give Tam and Meg a new life.
The folk
humor, in this sense, was not so self-conscious of its own life-it was rather much
like Tam’s drunken stupor; also it could never be dead.
437
It was there in the night
14
Kuan-jung Cheng
Chung Hsing Journal of Humanities, NCHU, 33
air, common, universal, nocturnal, spooky, unexpected, and changeable.
So the
exploration is not yet complete ; a further elaboration upon the changing, growing,
becoming, indefinable folk humor is only just begun.
The reader of this tale has
to attune himself to Tam’s drunkenness so that a carnival world could be peeped
upon.
Works Cited
The Dialogic Imagination.
Bakhtin, Mikhail.
Michael Holquist.
Problems of
Ed.
Michael Holquist.
Dostoevsky 法 Poetics.
Trans.
Trans.
Austen:
&
Caryl Emerson &
Texas UP, 1981.
Ed.
Caryl Emerson.
Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1984.
Rabelais and His World.
Trans.
Helene Iswolsky.
Bloominton: Indiana
UP, 1984.
Bold, Alan.
A Burns Companion.
Brown, Mary Ellen.
Dakers, Andrew.
New York: St Martin ’s Press, 1991.
Poems ofRobert Burns.
London: MacMillan Press, 1984.
Robert Burns: His Life and Genius.
New York: Haskell,
1972.
Geertz, Clifford.
Local Knowledge.
New York:
438
Basic Books, 1983.
A Romantic Grotesque: Robert Burns ’sTam o ’Shanter
15
浪漫的怪誕：言侖羅伯﹒伯恩斯
的湯姆奇遇
鄭冠榮＊
摘要
巴克汀在對話的想像 （The
Dialogic
Imagination） 和拉伯雷的世界 （Rabelais
and His
World) 兩本書中不斷提到蘊藏在嘉年華中的民俗，自十六世紀以降就流失了它深層及豐富
的意涵。同時他特別提及嘉年華會的精神在怪誕寫實主義（grotesque realism）中被發揮得淋
漓盡致，而此所謂怪誕寫實主義正是巴克汀用來破解拉伯雷主固且堅 （ Ga啥叫tua ） 和盪堡
藍璽 （ Pantagruel ） 兩書中困難的意象的理論。一直到浪漫時代，巴克汀直陳說浪漫主義的
文人已失去了表達怪誕主義豐富意義的能力，因為他們太著重表達世界中令人懼怕的事物，
並將此懼怕傳達給讀者。此篇論丈一方面用巴克汀的理論來閱讀浪漫詩人羅伯﹒伯恩斯
(Robert Burns ）的作品湯姆奇遇
(1枷 o'Shanter ） ﹔另一方面也用諸如酒醉、曖昧、修辭和
敘述觀點來檢視該作品特殊的內涵，也嚐試把該作品中所謂的民俗（ folk humor ）勾勒出來。
關鍵字：模稜兩可（ ambivalence)
嘉年華（ carnival)
誕寫實主義（ grotesque realism)
(local knowledge)
眾聲喧嘩（ heteroglossia)
多元聲音（ polyglossia)
＊國立中興大 學 外文~副教授
439
民俗（ folk humor)
怪
在地知鷗