童话中的字母人：安德鲁·朗（Andrew Lang）

经过莎拉·比塞尔（Sarah Bissell）上2016年5月20日•（（1）

Lang的插图黄色童话书（RB 4913）

可以使用各种不同的标签来描述19世纪的苏格兰作家安德鲁·朗（Andrew Lang，1844-1912）：民俗学家，人类学家，历史学家，评论家，诗人和翻译。他的名字在各种维多利亚时代的期刊中复发，他的文学努力非常多产。正如斯图尔特·凯利（Stuart Kelly）所指出的那样，到朗（Lang）去世时，他的名字可以在近250本书和数千篇文章中找到。不幸的是，今天他的工作仍然相对未知。从他的童话故事到他的人类学论文，他机智的文学批评再到他对心理学研究的探索，朗的成果为二十一世纪的读者提供了巨大的财富。该博客条目旨在突出格拉斯哥大学特别收藏的各种Lang材料。

Lang的名字通常与他的《儿童童话》系列相关联：一本十二个出版物，每个出版物都以不同的颜色命名。朗从众多文化中汇集了400多个故事，分享了翻译的作品，以将许多以前未知的故事带给英国观众。特殊收藏集拥有1906年的Lang's 1906年版黄色童话书，，，，具有“ Thumbelina”和“ The Crow”等叙述。这些故事伴随着H. J. Ford的令人愉悦的插图。

“在绝望的迷宫中”（RB 4913）

In his preface, Lang explains to his child audience that: ‘As to whether there are really any fairies or not, that is a difficult question … The Editor never saw any himself, but he knows several people who have seen them – in the Highlands – and heard their music … For these reasons, the Editor thinks there are certainly fairies, but they never do anyone any harm; and, in England, they have been frightened away by smoke and schoolmasters.’

朗声称仙女“永不造成伤害”的故事被这些故事本身所掩盖，在这些故事中，仙女是调皮的，双重的，甚至残酷的。In ‘The Little Green Frog’, for example, a King who loves his wife but often treats her thoughtlessly is punished for his careless conduct when ‘the fairies caused [his wife] to die quite suddenly.’ It seems slightly unfair that the sins of the husband are visited upon the long-suffering wife! In other tales fairies kidnap children, cast enchantments, and trick unsuspecting youths.

‘女巫薪水在树下看到年轻人”（RB 4913）

尽管Lang实际上并不相信仙女，但在超自然的情况下，他仍然相对开放。他谴责现代精神主义主要是旧现象的欺诈副本，其中有一些“廉价和庸俗的变化”：诸如敲击和物质化之类的客厅技巧。尽管如此，就像他的许多维多利亚时代同时代人一样，朗对心理学研究的思想也很感兴趣。他对他的人类学家和民俗学家表示沮丧，他们对此类事务有了高度的理性主义观点，而是倡导超自然现象是人类学探究的合法主题。公鸡巷和常识详细探讨这些主题，查看女巫，第二镜，民间传说和幽灵。Lang对异常现象不一定局限于无知和迷信或宗教危机时期的事实特别感兴趣。Instead, he argues that: ‘The last forty enlightened years [1854-1894] give us more bogles than all the ages between St. Augustine and the Restoration.’ For Lang, the large body of respectable evidence concerning the supernatural suggested ‘a substratum of fact’, perhaps connected to ancient conjuring tricks, hallucinatory experience, or ‘disease of observation.’ The author maintains a diplomatic attitude throughout this book, stating that he has been ‘unable to reach a negative or affirmative conclusion’ about the supposed ‘reality’ of abnormal occurrences. Lang takes a similar stance in梦与鬼书，，，，它呈现出各种超自然的相遇。Rather than trying to influence his readers, he allows them to draw their own conclusions, stating: ‘Where facts and experience, whether real or hallucinatory experience, end, where the mythopœic fancy comes in, readers may decide for themselves.’ Intriguingly, John Ferguson –这些书的收藏家的所有者- 不容Lang看似开放的姿态。他的笔记在后面公鸡巷指出：“作者在嘲笑整个事件时，巧妙地巧妙地恳求公平的科学研究。”

前封面梦与鬼书（Ferguson al-C.57）

朗的文学冥想也受到维多利亚时代读者的欢迎。各种片段和文章发表在19世纪的期刊上，并在诸如书籍和书籍人和关于文学的信。这些功能的后者最初在纽约发表了许多文章独立的。尽管形式和语气与他的孩子的故事大不相同，但朗的幽默感却闪耀着。He jocularly hails poetry as ‘a dame of the worthiest lineage’ who is no longer very popular, winning a ‘feigned respect, more out of courtesy than for liking.’ He argues that the recently-deceased societies dedicated to poets such as Browning, Shelley, and Wordsworth illustrate an unsettling truth: ‘that people have not the courage to study verse in solitude, and for their proper pleasure; men and women need confederates in the adventure.’ At times Lang seems somewhat pessimistic about the state of English poetry and literature in general. He states, for example, that ‘we have great poets living among us, but the fountains of their song are silent, or flow but rarely over a clogged and stony channel.’ But this pessimism is frequently被温暖，热情和温柔的幽默来反击。此外，与他的心理文本一样，Lang经常鼓励读者遵循自己的直觉，而不是坚持广泛接受的文化信仰。朗认为，试图“强迫某些作者的感情”是ju不必要试图培养橄榄或紫红色的品味。他声称：‘没有奇观比他更烦人了人们询问对这项艺术作品感到愉悦是否“正确”的人的视线。他们的爱与仇恨永远不会是真实的，自然的，自发的。’

无论您对历史或人类学感兴趣，仙女还是小说，在格拉斯哥大学特别收藏中的材料都可以为安德鲁·朗（Andrew Lang）的作品提供迷人的快照：维多利亚时代后期的一位可悲的信件。