期刊名称：Cercles : Revue Pluridisciplinaire du Monde Anglophone
电子版ISSN：1292-8968
出版年度：2014
期号：33
页码：145-163
出版社：Université de Rouen
摘要：When Seymour Levov thinks: "Nothing hangs together—none of it is linked up. It is only in your head that it is linked up. Nowhere else is there any logic," he, of course, is referring to his daughter Merry's continued rebellion and his interminable search for its cause [R OTH 1997 : 368- 369, emphasis in original]. In the absence of "logic," understanding, and linearity, Seymour confronts the realization that any narrative of Merry's life, and by extension his own, comes through the idiosyncratic construction of its trajectory. The lives of both M erry and Seymour are open events, resisting authoritative interpretation and "link[ing] up" only through theoretical suppositions dependent upon perspective. This movement from confusion and frustration to uncomfortable awareness of multiplicity, openness, and point of view repeats itself throughout Philip Roth's American Pastoral (1997). Like Seymour, the novel's readers often follow the same emotional path as they confront a similar, but different, difficulty of interpretation. Since this repetition works both inside and outside the text, I would like to suggest that using American Pastoral to teach literary theory increases the effectiveness of both ventures. Their mutual difficulty reinforces one's need for the other; whereas literary theory demands an object of analysis, American Pastoral necessitates organizing theoretical structures. The goal of each, as Seymour and his readers learn, is to show that what "hangs together" in our world, our literature, and our lives is dependent upon our lenses of perspective and their philosophical underpinnings
