新托福阅读：简奥斯汀的小说与手稿

英国女小说家简•奥斯汀的作品广为流传，被翻译成各国文字并多次翻拍成电影，深受人们的喜爱。

Jane Austen, one of the greatest novelists in English literature, had her work heavily edited to fix original manuscripts littered with spelling and grammatical mistakes, an expert said Saturday.

简•奥斯汀是为人熟知的英国文学史上伟大的小说家。但据研究简•奥斯汀文学作品的专家称，其实她的作品有很大一部分文字都是经人润饰加工过，且其原稿中存在着很多拼写和语法错误。

Professor Kathryn Sutherland studied 1,100 original handwritten pages of Austen's unpublished writings and concluded that her efforts had been polished to correct the errors.

凯瑟琳•萨瑟兰教授通过研究奥斯汀尚未发表的1,100页原始手稿得出了这样一个结论：她作品中的文字内容是经人修改和处理过。

"It's widely assumed that Austen was a perfect stylist -- her brother Henry famously said in 1818 that 'everything came finished from her pen' and commentators continue to share this view today," the Oxford University English literature academic said.

牛津大学英国文学学院称：“众所周知，奥斯汀是一位杰出的文体学家。她的哥哥亨利在1818年就曾这样说过：‘她的文字都是出自于的她的笔下。’当今文学评论家也都赞同这样的观点。”

"The reputation of no other English novelist rests so firmly on this issue of style, on the poise and emphasis of sentence and phrase, captured in precisely weighed punctuation.

“没有任何一位英国小说家在句式，选词和造句上能够达到向奥斯汀那样字斟句酌，巧妙地使用标点。”

"But in reading the manuscripts, it quickly becomes clear that this delicate precision is missing."

Sutherland said that Austen's unpublished manuscripts "unpick her reputation for perfection in various ways."

"We see blots, crossings out, messiness -- we see creation as it happens, and in Austen's case, we discover a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing. She broke most of the rules for writing good English," the academic added.

萨瑟兰在评论奥斯汀尚未发表的手稿中这样说到：“但在阅读她的原稿时，以前那些精妙的遣词造句都荡然无存了。在这些手稿中，我们没有发现那些各种形式的相当完美的修饰手法。我们看到的是修改抹除后乱糟糟的污点痕迹，偶尔会有一些带有新意的句子。在奥斯汀的原稿中，我们发现了她写的的文句不符合语法规则。文中大多数句子都没有按照标准英语语法规则来写。”

In particular, the "polished punctuation and epigrammatic style" typical of some of her novels is missing, suggesting someone else was "heavily involved" in editing her work, Sutherland said.

"Letters between Austen's publisher John Murray II and his talent scout and editor William Gifford, acknowledging the untidiness of Austen's style and how Gifford will correct it, seem to identify Gifford as the culprit," she added.

萨瑟兰说：“奇怪的是，那些在她书中起修饰作用的标点和讽刺性的语句在她的原稿中却没有找到。这就向我们暗示了一个信息：有人曾在她的作品编辑上进行了大刀阔斧的润饰和加工。从奥斯汀跟他的出版商约翰•默里以及编辑威廉姆•吉福德的信件中可以得知：奥斯汀不按语法规则的写作形式以及吉福德可能对其文稿进行了一定的加工，也许，吉福德就是那个对奥斯汀作品进行润饰的人。

Austen, born in 1775, lived most of her life in Hampshire, southern England. She died in 1817, aged 41, from an unknown illness.

奥斯汀生于1775年，她在英格兰南部的汉普郡度过了她的大半生。她于1817年死于一场疾病，享年41岁。

Her novels, published from 1811 onwards, include "Sense and Sensibility", "Pride and Prejudice", "Mansfield Park", "Emma", "Northanger Abbey" and "Persuasion".

自1811年起，她发表的小说有：《理智与情感》，《傲慢与偏见》 ，《曼斯菲尔德庄园》，《艾玛》，《诺桑觉寺》，和《劝导》 。

Murray was Austen's publisher for the last two years of her career, overseeing "Emma", the second edition of "Mansfield Park" and "Persuasion".

默里是奥斯汀创作事业最后两年里负责出版其文稿的出版商，他负责审核了小说《艾玛》，以及《曼斯菲尔德庄园》和《劝导》 第二版的出版。

Sutherland's discoveries about the author's prose style came as part of a project to create a free online archive of all Austen's handwritten fiction manuscripts.

萨瑟兰关于奥斯汀散文体的发现成果是来自于一个关于创建奥斯汀小说手稿的在线免费档案的项目。

It will bring the manuscripts together in one place for the first time since 1845 when they were dispersed among family members under the terms of Austen's sister Cassandra's will.

这个项目将会是自1845年以来，首次把奥斯汀所有手稿统一收集到一处。因为当时根据奥斯汀姐姐卡桑德拉的遗愿，奥斯汀的所有手稿都被其亲属分别收藏着。