《樂園》描繪了一個極傳統、父權至上的黑人社區，和一個相較之下稍顯瑣碎、失序的“女子修道院”。表面上，諸如此類的二元對立在小說中層出不窮，並且不斷牽制著小說情節。其實，茉莉森正利用此“井然有序”的敘述方式凸顯此論述本身的脆弱，同時採取諸多廣為人知的敘事技巧，多方交雜並衝撞出小說、文學、甚至語言世界裡另一繁複多變的風貌。眼見長久以來諱澀不仁的一言堂景象無時無刻地啃噬、麻木人心/性，茉莉森始終致力於解放，以及表現語言本身微妙、細緻的質地。

茉莉森於榮獲諾貝爾文學獎時表示，〈語言的強度與美景在於它致力傳達人世間無以名狀之境〉。有感於茉莉森對語言的深切關照與覺察，我引用了這句話作為本論文的標題。一方面意指她在《樂園》中運用的〈干預〉策略，是基於一種非常“個體的”、“繁瑣的”人道關懷；另一方面也肯定她在不輕易否定任何個體特質的認知下，苦心思索、或是努力疏通人間樂園的苦與樂。

Morrison opens Paradise by constructing a black community based on a traditional, unrelenting patriarchal discourse which seems to be subverted by a rather trivial, private or “feminine” talk represented by a party of outcast women. Such binary oppositions are thus surfaced continually in the novel and are further intertwined with various genres Morrison draws from myth, fairy tale, romance, biblical story, folklore, vernacular (hi)story, etc. Nevertheless, while elaborating those literary genres and antagonizing sexes, races and classes, she parodies/caricatures and “molests” them with stereotyped but paradoxical, or contradictory narrative. In so doing, she complicates and revitalizes the seemingly organized but actually paralyzed, unproductive world of language. By fusing and infusing opposite elements into concepts such as stern religious beliefs and one-sided, self-righteous morality, Morrison liberates literature, or language, in a way that it “is both the law and its transgression.”

I quote a phrase from Morrison’s Nobel lecture—Language’s “force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable”—as part of my title to suggest that her narrative politics—“stepping in”—is grounded on a sense of human interrelatedness. Demanding as it is, the compassion for distinct individuals, especially for those who are muffled by “representational” or “monumental” discourse, is what Morrison tries to gesture toward in her writing. With acute imagination and insightful compassion, she not only voices and makes the “trivial,” “insignificant” or “negligible” things remarkable enough to be juxtaposed with “the grand,” but also employs them to “step in” and transform the rather rigid, unreceptive idea of conventional literary canon. Rather than founding a particular ethnic or gendered canon (or hierarchy) to counteract the already dominant, it seems that Morrison appeals to transcend those barriers by releasing the ambiguous, paradoxical and inspiring properties of language, and at the same time, paying deference to diverse, ineffable human differences and experiences.

Table of Contents


Introduction ------------------------------------------------------- 1

Chapter 1 P/paradise -------------------------------------------- 16

Chapter 2 “Unmolested” Paradise -------------------------------- 32

Chapter 3 “Unmolested” Language -------------------------------- 57

Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------- 83

Works Cited ------------------------------------------------------- 89

Works Cited

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