論 文 摘 要
這篇論文嘗試以「傅柯式的論述」，重新閱讀《紅字》文本。從傅柯「作者／功能」（author-function）的概念出發：一方面，把Ａ字定義成一種霍桑式的文字風格、寫作策略，它展現的是一種超脫冷靜的表象關係，客觀地在高處安排世界秩序。另一方面，又把Ａ字解讀為一種霍桑式的歷史性格、自述方式，它流露的是一種身陷其中的深層焦慮，主觀地試圖在當下了解自己。Ａ字就是一種化身功能、一個自我解譯的過程、矛盾心理的內部反照、自我澄明的鎮定效果。Ａ字就是這種兼具當局者迷與旁觀者清的自傳體。通過它，作者、讀者、角色人物都能在其中找到自己和自己的化身。我們才發現，原來發自神殿的Ａ字，一面是暗藏真理的惡魔，一面是展現權力的守護神，一種根本的二元性。
第二章「歧義的作者：一種文化整合策略」，我們試圖藉由傅柯式的「表象」（representation），把這居扉頁又無所不在的紅字Ａ，定義成一個特定社會時空中，某種預設的「邊陲位置」。它讓讀者身在其外，又悠遊其中，忘情於一個井然有序、結構嚴謹的金字塔圖表裡，在它的頂端是「作者／上帝」綜覽一切，頒布命令。這種全景敞視的穿透力，就歷史而言，就成為一種預示能力。
第三章「諷刺性檔案：書寫現時的歷史」，假傅柯「系譜學」之便，把Ａ字神秘曖昧的本質等同於一種「詮釋過程」（interpretation）。它自顧自地在故事開場就預示既定結局，似乎，角色人物動觀定見的一切行為標準，全刻在神諭般的Ａ字裡面。如是，Ａ字既是客觀表象的符碼，又是主觀詮釋的神諭﹔既是考古者的超脫物外，又是系譜家的獻身投入。它是作者權力的標記，也是讀者真理的載體。介乎此二元對立，才讓我們開始以一個讀者的身份反思，身為一個主角、一個英雄、某種悲劇人物的必要性與可能性，尤其是在一個傳奇故事（Romance）裡。
第四章「關於他的故事：傳奇故事的迷思」，我們試圖把Ａ字如金字塔般穩固的一套「解譯─定位方式」，釋放還原成其初始狀態，一片朦朧的斷頭空白（anonymity）。去嘗試勾勒傳奇故事的有效範圍。此間，作者既身陷其中，動彈不得，又是超脫而神聖的表徵。作者假上帝之名，逕行匿名遊戲﹔實則，其文本根生於讀者眾聲。
如是，我們才來總括所謂「現代性」（modernity）的內涵。就Ａ字而言，與其說它是「作者之死，讀者之生」的宣讀者，不如說它揭示了兩者的共謀。就《紅字》來說，或許它曾意味著一個具體歷史事件的隱喻，但對當代的讀者而言，它毋寧是一種歷史轉折點的可能。就一個作者而言，正由於霍桑於「歧義」（ambiguity） 與「反諷」（irony）技法的巧妙結合，才使其既對自身進行創作，又對所處時代做出反映﹔正由於其於客觀表象與主觀詮釋的巧妙混用，於自傳體 （autobiography）與傳記體（biography）的似是而非，於考古者與系譜家得失之間的平衡損益，才使其超越傳奇故事的框限、英雄主義的迷思，又能嚴肅地面對內在於歷史傳統、故事文類與作者身份的矛盾衝突。站在這樣的二元性，所謂的「現代性」，我們才來呼應傅柯所言：
「所謂現代人，並不需要遠走高飛，以便發現自身─去發掘其秘密，去揭發隱藏的真理﹔現代人是試圖創新自身的人。現代性並不旨在『釋放自身』﹔現代性迫使人面臨創造自身的難題。」
對這篇論文而言，我們的「現代性」，在赫斯特踏出獄門的第一步，在她進駐海邊小屋的門檻上，在她驀然回首來時路的回憶裡，就已被預言：在外面，亦在裡面﹔無須遠走高飛，亦不假他人─「現代性」是反求諸己，化身遊戲。

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　ABSTRACT
This thesis is a Foucauldian discourse on The Scarlet Letter (1850), the letter A. As a sophisticated cultural artifact, the letter A is brilliantly woven with the same cultural cloth that by 1850 it had produced Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter: A Romance. We attempt to identify the ambiguity of the letter A, the significant plurality and the diverse meaning, with Foucaudian “author-function.” We associate the letter A with three kinds of “author-functions” in The Scarlet Letter: namely, “work on oneself,” “responding to one’s time,” and a vehicle of “his-story.” As a linking of society, the historical moment, and critical use of romance tradition, what the letter A denotes stands for the ambiguous author, the ironic archive, and the author’s confession in his autobiography as well. Hawthorne’s reinterpretation of the letter A in The Scarlet Letter can be taken as a challenge to his literary life.
Firstly, the letter A is burdened with the necessity of discourse on the self. The task entails one’s work on himself with, in Foucault’s words, “a technology of representation.” The representation brings forth certain unity of writing in The Scarlet Letter─all differences in the text, “having to be resolved, at least in part, by the principles of evolution, maturation, or influence” (Foucault, WA 204). It is an authorial imperative through which characters─adulteress Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the leech Roger Chillingworth, and the elf-child Pearl─are all placed in proper positions in the community of the novel. The imperative yields “perfect certainty by perfectly ordering representations and signs to mirror the ordering of the world” (Dreyfus and Rabinow, MF 19). The letter A is a table for ordering, and the fictitious community in The Scarlet Letter is built firmly on this table.
Secondly, the letter A is imbued with the necessity of responding to one’s time. The task entails one’s work on himself in a process of interpretation. The interpretation serves to “neutralize the contradictions” (Foucault, WA 204) that may emerge in the narrative of The Scarlet Letter. The letter A is the very center point in this process: around it, contradictions in the narrative revolve, and “incompatible elements” in the text are tied together, or, at last, “organized around a fundamental or originated contradiction” (Foucault, WA 204). It is an authorial directive to absorb his readers into the narrative of the novel, and thus setting them on a presupposed liminal position in a given society. That given society is the Jacksonian society. As the readers of The Scarlet Letter, we are at the edge of the Jacksonian society, but not go beyond. Then we come to acknowledge that, we are nothing but “our” history─American history─and that therefore, we will never get a total picture of who we are. We will never get a detached picture of our history. As the letter A moves from the mid-nineteenth-century customhouse back to its Puritan origin, it serves as the cultural genealogy. It functions to recall a major cultural shift in the Jacksonian society.
Thirdly, the letter A functions as the vehicle of “his-story,” the vehicle of the author’s autobiographical impulse. Or in Foucault’s words, the letter A, as a linking of one’s discourse on himself and response to his time, is the task of one’s “producing himself” in his own text. Hawthorne chose to introduce The Scarlet Letter with an essay, “The Custom-House.” In this introductory essay, we meet both Hawthorne’s “story” and the history behind his story. We are informed both his personal story, his employment and dismissal in the Salem Custom House, and the history of political changes that brought about these happenings on him. The letter A as “his-story” would suggest paradoxes of The Scarlet Letter as a historical romance: “just as he [Hawthorne] injected fiction with history, so he injected history with fiction” (Murfin 330). When his fiction is as true as the history, we meet the empirical characteristics of the author. Hawthorne the author is taken as “a historical figure at the crossroads of a certain number of events” (Foucault, WA 204). The letter A is thus “the posthumous papers.” The Scarlet Letter is the author’s confession in his autobiography. When his fiction is as false as the history, we find that author’s persona is maintained in its transcendental anonymity. Hawthorne is taken as a “decapitated surveyor,” preserved in its own realm soundly. The letter A denotes the ambiguous author in an ironic archive.
In conclusion, it is not by confining his autobiographical impulse that Hawthorne the author is justified to write a national romance. But rather, it is his unique combination of the autobiographical impulse with the biographer’s viewpoint that enables him to go beyond the romance tradition, and yet to take paradoxes of romance seriously. The modernity of Hawthorne lies not in his attempt to apply objective method to studying himself─his nature, his language, and his society─but rather, in his very ability to understand himself in his-story. The letter A is this long-standing technique of self-knowledge. With the letter A, we are ready to read ourselves in the process of ego-split. We are readers on the liminal position─fully inside and fully outside of our cultural field. On this liminal position, Hawthorne the author has transformed his autobiographical impulse into the double in the letter A. The letter A is first to be the power that wards off “the death of the author,” then to be the truth that brings forth “the birth of the reader.” The birth of the reader is not necessarily at the cost of the death of the author. The “author-reader” doublet makes possible our very ability to understand ourselves in our reading of The Scarlet Letter. For Sacvan Bercovitch, his historicist approach to the letter A is his very ability to understand himself in his own book. This book is The Office of The Scarlet Letter. Contemporary reading of the letter A is also set in particular historical situation. It is an ever-elusive background, against which the “author-reader” doublet in The Scarlet Letter─mute yet ready to speak─is perpetually summoned towards American self-knowledge.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABSTRACTS (in English & in Chinese )
CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1
CHAPTER TWO The Ambiguous Author:
　　　　　　　　　A-Strategy of Cultural Cohesion　　　　 23　
i.The Rise of Representation
ii.Ha(w)thorne and His Doubles
iii.Monologics of Liberal Ambiguity
CHAPTER THREE 　An Ironic Archive:
　　　　　　　　　Writing A-History of the Present 52
i. The Spiral Movement
ii.Providential Unconscious
iii.Language of Prophecy
CHAPTER FOUR About His-story:
　　　　 　　　　　Paradoxes of A-Romance　　　　　　　　　78
i.A Strategy of Process through Hiatus
ii.The Dialectics of Ambiguity and Irony
iii.Sisyphus-like Task of Inaction
CHAPTER FIVE Conclusion:
What is an Autobiography 106
BIBLIOGPRAPHY 118

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