A Sartrean Existential Interpretation ofCharacters’ Alienation in Conrad’s Nostromo

○ Luo Xuan Wu Yujin

(Honghe University, Mengzi, Yunnan, 661100)



A Sartrean Existential Interpretation ofCharacters’ Alienation in Conrad’sNostromo

○ Luo Xuan Wu Yujin

(HongheUniversity,Mengzi,Yunnan, 661100)

Nostromois acclaimed by many critics as Conrad’s crowning achievement for its broad background, multiple characters, unique structure, and effective depiction of human nature. For the very vastness and profundity, however, it is also considered the most obscure and difficult work in the Conrad canon, which has aroused numerous critiques and still calls for further analysis. One of the most important reasons contributing toNostromo’s greatness is its exploration of human condition. In this novel, Conrad existentially reveals man’s existence in the absurd world, man’s alienation and man’s existence with others. The existential elements are exemplified fully and profoundly. However, such existential ideas in the novel have not been fully revealed by previous studies because most of them lack solid theoretic foundations. Focusing on the existential ideas the novel reveals, this thesis tries to interpret characters’ alienation by applying Sartre’s existential theory.

existential ideas, absurdity, alienation, Nostromo

I. A Brief Introduction to Conrad and Nostromo

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) is regarded as one of the most outstanding English novelists in the 20th century. In F.R.Leavis’s influentialTheGreatTradition(1983), Conrad is ranked “among the very greatest novelists in the language- or any language”.[1]257

Nostromopresents a panorama of a whole country with its social, political and economic movements on various levels. Based on such a vast canvas, Conrad explores the inter-relations between the individual and society, ideals and illusions, justification of aims and action, skepticism and isolation. As Baines comments, Conrad probes into almost “every category of human activity [he] considers important”[2]301in a modern world. Critics agree thatNostromorepresents an important development in Conrad’s career. His earlier works, includingLordJimandHeartofDarkness, provide an intense analysis of a few characters, while in the political novels, beginning withNostromoand includingTheSecretAgentandUnderWesternEyes, Conrad widened his scope to examine an entire society. However,Nostromois far more than just a novel of politics. It existentially reveals, with astonishing insight and wisdom, the world in which man exists is filled with crushing external constraints. The natural environment inNostromois totally indifferent and absurd. In an absurd world devoid of meaning, the characters always feel alienated and are unable to achieve anything. They have no way to escape such absurdity and the feeling of alienation. The existential ideasNostromocontains greatly increase the value of the novel. Conrad himself referred toNostromoas his “largest canvas”, and many critics consider the novel one of the greatest of the twentieth century.

Ⅱ. Literarure Review

Many critics tend to interpretNostromofrom political and historical perspective. In Elaine Jordan’s collection of essays, she mentions that “sinceNostromo, together withSecretAgent(1907) andUnderWesternEyes(1911) was labeled as a political novel, it has become one of the most important test-cases for political readings”.[3]13Her book introduces two influential critics who have helped to shape the features of contemporary approaches toNostromo. InBeginnings:IntentionandMethod, Edward Said, by bringing together refined deconstructive practice and historical analysis, comments onNostromoas “a novel about political history that is reduced, over the course of several hundred pages, to a condition of mind, an inner state”.[4]110Frederic Jameson, in hisThePoliticalUnconscious:NarrativeasaSociallySymbolicAct, brings together materialist and post-structural methodologies.Nostromofigures centrally in his attempt to devise a Marxist narrative grammar by which to approach the text in an age of high capitalism and in order to probe the text’s formal structures as symptoms of the containment and suppression of history by ideology.[3]16-17Later on, Cedric Watts demonstrates the “seemingly Marxist quality” inNostromo: the presentation of the progress of Sulaco inNostromothrough various stages, from feudalism to capitalism, similarly encloses the Marxist notion of history.[5]152-156Watt argues that the real reason for consideringNostromoas a historical novel is that it is a study of the processes of contemporary history.[6]20Fleishman suggests that “the novel marks the fulfilment of Conrad’s political imagination and represents the history of a society as a living organism … indeed, the complex narrative structure of the novel reflects this sense of history’s unfolding processes”.[7]85In his exploration of the novel’s engagement with history, Kiernan Ryan detects a “fundemental contradictory tension” withNostromo: a tension between a drive to unmask “the prevailing social order” as the product of “a changing human history” and a counter-drive that affirms not just the ultimate inaccessibility of historical process to rational

analysis but the unintelligibility of reality.[8]45

In contrast to the flourishing international studies onNostromo, domestic studies remain a barren field. Few scholars have devoted to this area. Deng Yingling from Hunan University has mainly focused on the artistic features of the novel. In herNostromoandConrad’sArtisticViews, she holds that inNostromoConrad’s way of constructing the novel enables the author to convey his personal experience and aesthetic ideas, to reflect society and human history more objectively and to enrich the implicitness and ambiguity of the novel.[9]6-8Jiang Lifu and Shi Yunlong analyze the modernism inNostromofrom four aspects: narrative model, narrative perspective, characterization and

artistic techniques.[10]92-97Hu Qiang from Zhejiang University approachesNostromofrom a moral perspective and probes into the moral darkness by studying the relationship between moral

idealism and materialism.[11]59-125The Chinese scholar Yu Jianhua has also commented on Conrad’s view of history and explores how Conrad presented it inNostromo.[12]50-56

Ⅲ. Sartre’s Existential Theories on Alienation

Self-deception, which according to Sartre, is the “reflexive psychology, which means man refuses to face up the reality of which he is at least partly aware”.[13]156When something happens against man’s expectation, he feels a deep sense of anguish, which naturally renders him to escape into “self-deception” to convince himself that he should do this and should not do that. In doing so, he will be at ease in his mind. Thus, “self-deception” provides a way for him to explain the things in a new way, which is not the thing it is.

Practico-inert is the word Sartre creates to describe the relationship between man and the material objects he produces. According to Sartre, this word means “the order of struggle in which the individual has to struggle against the products of his own praxis. Action is not solely determined by the original need, but by the effects of one’s own satisfactions (products)”.[14]79Thus, “the transformation of nature by human labor can have its own anti-human consequences”.[14]79By Sartre’s view, the practico - inert generates a forceful experience of alienation, in which the labor of the person returns to him in the form of “another”.[14]81Where one is objectified in something outside of oneself (in matter) thereby discovering oneself as “another” in the totalized object. In other words, man creates material objects, but the material objects in turn control and dominate man, thereby forcing man into the restraints of “practico - inert” he creates.

Regarding the relationship between man and others, Sartre emphasizes primacy of individuality over community as he testifies: “hell is — other people”.[15]47InBeingandNothingness, Sartre analyzes the relationship between “the Ego and the Other”. According to Sartre, “the Ego is a hypostasization … of the for-itself which is reflected-on and made into an in-itself by the Other”.[16]394In other words, it means the Other always tries to oppress, enslave the Ego and even make the Ego into a physical object when they encounter each other. However, Sartre feels that “in love man attempts to discover a grounding for his being through becoming his partner’s absolute choice, not just a relative, contingent choice”.[16]371Through love, declares Sartre, “we feel our existence is justified”.[16]371

Ⅳ. An Analysis of Alienation in the novel from

Sartre’s Perspective

4.1 Characters’ Self Alienation

The characters inNostromoare alienated from themselves by means of falling into “self-deception”, which according to Sartre, is the “reflexive psychology, which means man refuses to face up the reality of which he is at least partly aware”.[13]156When something happens against these characters’ expectations, they feel a deep sense of anguish, which naturally renders them to escape into “self-deception” to convince themselves that they should do this and should not do that. In doing so, they will be at ease in their minds. Thus, “self-deception” provides a way for them to explain the things in a new way, which is not the thing it is. There are many strategies by which these major characters in the novel attempt to make sense of the unreality which surrounds them and fall into Sartrean “self-deception”.

Nostromo in this novel escapes the reality and attempts to establish himself at the center of the world. His name, “Nostromo”, is a nickname given by influential people of Sulaco. Although the word “Nostromo” is an Italian nautical term meaning boatswain, many critics consider the name a contraction of the

Italian “nostro uomo,” meaning “our man,” for Nostromo is the only character in the novel trusted by both the government authorities and the common people. Such name satisfies his vanity and makes him always feel that he is pre-eminently of the other people. So he abandons his real name and considers his nickname as a symbol of power. However, the so-called “our man” is only loyal to all the influential interests that exploit Costaguana and its native inhabitants, for the every task he accomplishes has helped these influential people maintain their government and gain more power. His life thus becomes a useful object in the service of European exploiters. By employing him as the foreman, Europeans controls most workers of Sulaco. In their eyes, Nostromo is “always a very shrewd and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless, and remarkably useful. A perfect handyman”.[17]267Under such compliment, Nostromo escapes his true self or true existence. He still enjoys his illusory fame and regards himself a trustworthy man among people. Teresa Viola always mocks Nostromo’s concern for “the praise of people who have given you a silly name”.[17]256-257He possesses, as Decoud recognizes, a “complete singleness of motive” and a “consistent character”.[17]275which has the unity and simplicity of glorious conceit. He makes sense of his world by referring everything to himself and thinking of “nobody but himself”[17]290, as Signora Viola points out. The engineer-in-chief is impressed by the dash and swagger which Nostromo displays and thinks that “He must be extremely sure of himself”[17]310, but Dr Monygham replies, “If that is all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing”.[17]310

Deoud is another man who falls into self-deception and alienates from himself. In the novel, his manner “induced in him a Frenchified — but most unfrench- cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellectual superiority…he was in danger of remaining a sort of nondescript dilettante all his life”.[17]152In Sartrean terms, this danger could be averted only by Decoud’s purposefully fashioning a project for the attainment of a more rewarding life. But Decoud has no such project in his life. For him, everything that happens in this country is meaningless. Antonian Avellanos has castigated him years earlier for “the aimlessness of his life”.[17]154He decides to support Costaguana’s attempts at political liberation, but his decision is made with his usual levity and cynicism. Although he may have informed Emilia Gould that “he felt no longer an idle cumberer of the earth” by having become “the journalist of Sulaco”[17]156, his existence remains an uncommitted sham. Indeed, he acknowledges that his journalism does not spring from what he considers to be his true self but is in fact “deadly nonsense. Deadly to me!”.[17]172His strongest aspiration is to carry Antonia “away out of these deadly futilities of pronunciamientos and reforms”.[17]175Certainly Decoud considers himself prepared to take any risk for Antonia’s sake, with “faith in my own ideas, in my own remedies, in my own desires”.[17]198But he fails to act on this belief in his independence. When he “found himself solitary on the beach” of the Great Isabel[17]262, Decoud feels his world to be alien and meaningless. In the oppressive solitude, Decoud fails to achieve his individual and unique existence due to lack “faith in himself and others”[17]265, he is unable to bear the weight of finding himself alone in an indifferent universe. “After three days of waiting for the sight of some human face, he caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own individuality”.[17]267He becomes “a victim of …disillusioned weariness” and his individuality gradually “merged into the world of cloud and water, of natural forces and forms of nature”.[17]268Without the consciousness of individuality, Decoud is vanquished by the brute non-conscious world that envelops him.

Charles Gould inNostromoespouses San Tome with the noble intention of making the mine “a serious and moral success”[17]86, but such intention is nothing but his illusion and self-deception. In their “illusion” he and his wife choose the silver as a means “to make good their vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of weariness and despair”[17]90, doing so without considering profoundly the whole situation, trusting instead to an “idea of rehabilitation” that “was so vague as to elude the support of argument”.[17]92Charles’s single-minded preoccupation with the mine as a source of material prosperity makes him almost insensitive to the urgencies of socio-political as well as the domestic life. As a result, he is gradually cut off not only from his wife but also from the moral values by which he wishes to justify the mine. Charles gradually becomes an embodiment of man’s tendency to self-deception and the need to idealize every action.

After witnessing the corruption of materialism, Emilia still believes that the materialism can bring her happiness, even though she knows that the “only real” side of her relationship with Charles rests on the “immaterial”.[17]93She too therefore falls into Sartrean self-deception.

Other characters stay loyal to something, but they become detached from the present reality of the world about them, such as Viola, with his Republican standard of faithfulness and duty, or Dr Monygham, in his devotion to Mrs Gould. Viola is an old man with a shaggy white “leonine head”.[17]26He is in part a study of old age, and of how political ideologies change. His inspirer was Garibaldi, and Viola has all Garibaldi’s disinterested “puritanism of conduct”.[17]27Viola lives in exile because he “can not live under a king”; and despite the popular belief that he has “a buried hoard in his kitchen” he has in fact an “austere contempt for all personal advantage”.[17]31He scorns his materialism: “We wanted nothing, we suffered for the love of all humanity!”[17]33Viola’s serious commitment to the old political roles may be admired by some people, but if we judge him in historical or political terms, we can find his attitudes is a kind of self-deception and a way to escape the reality of the world around him.

Sartre says that the self-deception is a risk built into the nature of people’s consciousness. Anyone could not avoid it, even the greatest man. So characters inNostromohave no chance to escape the fate of experiencing the self-deception which has become the essential part of human consciousness.

4.2 Alienation Between Characters

Living in an absurd world that is full of people, no man can side-step the relationship with others. The relationship with others is as complicated as the relationship with people themselves. InBeingandNothingness, Sartre analyzes the relationship between “the Ego and the Other”. According to Sartre, “the Ego is a hypostasization … of the for-itself which is reflected-on and made into an in-itself by the Other”.[16]394In other words, it means the Other always tries to oppress, enslave the Ego and even make the Ego into a physical object when they encounter each other.

InNostromo, the relationships between characters are destructive. They can be divided into two kinds. The first one is the relationships between Europeans and native inhabitants. The second one is the relationships between Europeans.

The thesis will start from the first kind of relationships — the relationships between Europeans and native inhabitants. InNostromo, the Europeans are representatives of economic colonialism and imperialism. Their aim is to dominate the policy, economy and social life of Sulaco. The words of Holroyd, who is the investor of mine, fully reveal Europeans’ ambition:

Wewillbegivingthewordforeverything:industry,trade,law,journalism,art,politics,andreligion…ifanythingworthtakingholdofturnsupattheNorthPole.Andthenweshallhavetheleisuretotakeinhandtheoutlyingislandsandcontinentsoftheearth.Weshallruntheworld’sbusinesswhethertheworldlikesitornot.[17]75

The native inhabitants are used by them as tools to gain more material interests. So the existences of these native inhabitants are all reduced to objects as in-itself. Under the Europeans’ ruthless exploitation, the natives in Sulaco are deprived of their humanities and made into the objects to be manipulated.

The natives also suffer from the primary evil of industrialism: dehumanization. In the days before the revolution, the European-born Cargadores who has the “naive human spirit”[17]136force the natives to perform bullfight every day.Nostromo’s role as foreman, master of labor, is to roust out the men on the mornings after from their “black, lightless cluster of huts, like cow-byres, like dog-kennels”.[17]173But whenNostromolater rebels against his own exploitation, he becomes at the same time conscious of the natives over whom he has been boss: “What he had heard Giorgio Viola say once was very true. Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept the people in poverty and subjection; they kept them as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service”.[17]173Nostromoin the novel lives under “good reputation”, he always depends on the others to pass judgement on him. As Sartre says: “I need the Other in order to realize fully all the structures of my being”.[16]394Therefore, he always cares what he is like before the Other. Teresa often scorns him: “You always take your pay out in fine words from those who care nothing for you”.[17]213Almost everyone seesNostromoin terms of his usefulness, even Teresa has a tendency to “fix” him, as Sartre would say, into an external instrument through her desire to “annex that apparently quiet and steady young man, affectionate and pliable”[17]224, for the benefit of the Viola family. And this exasperated him. “Did you think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were one of the watchdogs they keep over there in the railway yards?”[17]227

Not only are the natives alienated from Europeans, but also the Europeans themselves are alienated from one another. Europeans in the novel fight for power and gain and treat others as tools to achieve their goals. For instance, Holroyd uses Gould to gain more wealth from silver mine; Gould uses government of Ribiera to protect his silver mine against native bandits; the government of Ribiera in turn uses Gould to maintain their political power and extort more material interests. Hence they are all used and made into objects by others. Almost every European pins their faith to “material interests”[17]100rather than interpersonal bonds, so the relationships between them are unauthentic and destructive.

Sartre describes the relationship between self and the others as “hell is — other people”.[15]47In an absurd world, human relationships are unauthentic and always produce in man a sense of alienation. Man can not escape the alienation, for such alienation is “not the result of the confrontation of a unique human spirit with a particular set of essentially external conditions, but that it is the fate of any and all men who think and feel with any intensity about their relationship to others and the world which surrounds them”.[18]50

4.3 Alienation Between Characters and Their Material Creation

As for the relationship between man and the material objects he creates, Sartre introduces the idea of “practico-inert”, which means “the order of struggle in which the individual has to struggle against the products of his own praxis. Action is not solely determined by the original need, but by the effects of one’s own satisfactions (products)”.[14]79Thus, “the transformation of nature by human labor can have its own anti-human consequences”.[14]79By Sartre’s view, the practico-inert generates a forceful experience of alienation, in which the labor of the person returns to him in the form of “another”.[14]81Where one is objectified in something outside of oneself (in matter) thereby discovering oneself as “another” in the totalized object. In other words, man creates material objects, but the material objects in turn control and dominate man, thereby forcing man into the restraints of “practico-inert” he creates. Most characters of this novel are slaves of the silver mine. The power of alienation the mine possesses makes anyone who works for it loses his authentic being. Principally there are the two men who are most directly the slaves of the mine — Charles Gould, partner and manager, andNostromo, foreman and “ourman”.

The narrator presents Gould’s devotion to the mine in terms that show transference of consideration from the personal to the impersonal: San Tome gradually ensnares Gould’s affections, and his concern for it replaces his solicitude for his wife, who “discovered that he lived for mine rather than for her” and who seeks “to save him from the effects of that cold and overmastering passion, which she dreaded more than if it were an infatuation for another woman”.[17]219Charles comes to live for the mine rather than for his wife, and he demonstrates a “sentimental unfaithfulness”[17]365, a “subtle conjugal infidelity through which his wife was no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts”[17]365A wall of silver-bricks is said to be built between husband and wife, and Gould says to her: “I thought we had said all there was to say a long time ago. There is nothing to say now”.[17]370Gould adopts a policy of taciturnity in his political and business activity, but this silent reserve comes to infect his marriage and dictate his relationship with Emilia.

The silver-mine thus totally controls and corrupts Gould. He reopens the mine with the higher purpose of bringing wealth and peace to the poor country, but the result goes contrary to his expectations, Gould does not bring prosperity to the country, but makes the mine destroy everyone who comes to contact with it. Gould himself is dominated and objectified by the silver mine as “another”. In this way, he is alienated from the silver mine he creates.

Nostromo is another man who is dominated and destroyed by the silver mine. Among the dock workers Nostromo the “incorruptible” enjoys the prestige that easily comes to the man who is always daring and always successful. Both to his employers and to his associates he is “our man”, to be paid and complimented for his risks, but to be treated with the same cavalier off-handedness with which he himself seems to regard his achievements. No one stops to ask whether he has a soul, for Nostromo does not wear his heart on his sleeve.

It is only when a lighter of silver is to be spirited from the harbour to prevent capture that Nostromo comes under the spell of the mine. But Nostromo immediately embraces the saving of the silver as the very foundation of his existence, making it more important than the fetching of a priest for the dying Teresa, who upbraids him for succumbing to “the praise of people who have given you a silly name — and nothing besides — in exchange for your soul and body”.[17]226Teresa’s subsequent words indicate that at the time Nostromo, desperate for public acclaim, is unreflectively following his past pattern of behaviour: “Ah! You are always yourself, indeed”[17]227— a self which was leading him into “folly” that would “betray” him.[17]227In removing the treasure he does not deliberately embark on any carefully considered new project of selfhood; he merely seeks to enhance the considerable reputation he already possessed among the “they”. Thus, both Nostromo and Gould form their basic modes of being in relation to the Sartrean in-itself of the San Tome silver, which condemns them to inauthenticity.

The narrator calls Nostromo “the slave of the San Tome silver who felt the weight as of chains upon his limbs”.[17]445His submission to the power of the silver is confirmed by his cautious reflection “I must grow rich slowly”.[17]438Such obsession with the silver echoes the symbolic pattern of legendary romance in the novel: “And the spirits of good and evil that hover about a forbidden treasure understood well that the silver of San Tome was provided now with a faithful and lifelong slave”.[17]416The silver mine causes him to desert both old Teresa Viola on her sickbed and suicidal Decoud on the Great Isabel: “First a woman, then a man, abandoned each in their last extremity, for the sake of this accursed treasure”.[17]416It is an action “paid for by a soul lost and by a vanished life”, leaving its perpetrator “a hunted outcast” through devotion to the treasure.[17]418

Nostromo’s work contributes a lot to the production of silver and the silver helps him win the “good reputation” he lives for. His mode of being in relation to the silver mine is inauthentic. His later stealing action indicates he is totally enslaved and controlled by the silver. Like Gould, Nostromo has no way to get rid of the power of alienation the mine possesses.

Ⅴ. Conclusion

As Conrad’s best and most complex novel,Nostromoreveals man’s existence in the absurd world and man’s alienation in the world that he can neither comprehend nor control. Man cannot escape the absurdity of the world and the feeling of alienation. The existential elements in the novel are exemplified fully and profoundly. The absurdity of the world produces in man a sense of alienation. Nature permanently is alien to man. Characters in the novel are not only alienated from themselves and others, but from the material objects they create. By means of falling into “self-deception”, the characters inNostromoare alienated from themselves. They all make sense of unreality and escape their true selfhood. InNostromo, the relationships between characters are destructive. The characters always try to oppress, enslave and make others into physical objects and useful tools. San Tome, the silver mine, is the symbol of wealth and power. Europeans open and develop the mine, but in turn are dominated by it. The power of alienation the mine possesses makes anyone who works for it becomes its slave. The characters are thus alienated from others and the silver mine they create.

The present study, due to its limitations, is only a tentative application of Sartre’s existential theory to a new interpretation ofNostromo. Complicated as it is, Sarter’s theory can shed new light on literary studies, as it is well evidenced in this study, which has also fulfilled my original intention. Future studies can go into the application of other existential theories to the novel, which may deepen the understanding of the complex existential ideas the novel contains.

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[2] Baines, Jocelyn. 1960. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography[M].London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.

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[8] Bloom, Harold. 1987. Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo[M].New York: Chelsea House Publishers.

[9] 邓颖玲.《诺斯托罗莫》与康拉德的艺术主张[J].西南科技大学学报，2005(1).

[10] 姜礼福，石云龙.《诺斯托罗莫》的现代主义艺术风格探析[J].哈尔滨学院学报，2007(3).

[11] 胡强.康拉德政治三部曲研究[M].中国社会科学出版社，2008.

[12] 虞建华.读解《诺斯托罗莫》—康拉德表现历史观、英雄观的艺术手法[J].外国文学评论，2001(3).

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[15] Sartre, Jean Paul. 1955. No Exit. In “No Exit” and Three Other Plays[M].New York: Vintage Books.

[16] Sartre, Jean Paul. 1993. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology[M].China Social Sciences Publishing House.

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罗旋，男，云南省人，红河学院外国语学院讲师，硕士，研究方向：英美文学；

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从萨特的存在主义解读康拉德《诺斯托罗莫》中的人物异化关系

罗旋 吴雨缙

(红河学院 外国语学院，云南 蒙自 661100)

《诺斯托罗莫》被评论家们誉为康拉德最杰出的小说。这部小说以其场面宏大、人物众多、叙事结构独特以及揭示人性深刻著称，同时也因此而显得错综复杂，深奥难懂，引发后人评论无数，莫衷一是。《诺斯托罗莫》之所以是一部伟大的小说，一个重要的原因是它对于人类生存状态的探讨。在这部小说中，康拉德以存在主义的视角揭示出了人在荒诞世界中的存在状态，人所经历的异化，以及个人与他人的存在关系。这些存在主义因素在小说中得到了全面而深刻的体现。然而，由于缺乏坚实系统的理论基础，先前对于这部小说的研究未能全面地反映出这些存在主义思想。本文紧扣《诺斯托罗莫》中的存在主义思想，尝试应用萨特的存在主义理论来解读这部小说。

存在主义思想； 荒诞； 异化； 诺斯托罗莫

吴雨缙，女，贵州省人，红河学院外国语学院讲师，硕士，研究方向：英美文学。