摘 要

美国社会有着深远的宗教渊源与传统，尤其是基督教。无论是在日常生活还是精神领域中，人们都受到宗教思想有形或无形的引导与制约。然而，宗教最为深刻、具体的影响是在文学创作上。美国当代作家约翰•厄普代克是一位有意识去表现宗教主题及宗教情怀的作家，宗教是其小说创作中反复出现的主题并“成为厄普代克切入当代美国社会的一个重要角度”。厄普代克的成名作“兔子四部曲”更是全方位地体现出作者对当代美国宗教的思考和对人类命运的关注。本论文借其作品创作时期美国社会、时代背景对主人公兔子哈里一生宗教信仰的影响来分析该作品中宗教思想的体现。《兔子四部曲》由《兔子，快跑》、《兔子回家》、《兔子富了》和《兔子安息》组成。本文第一部分主要介绍作者和作品；第二部分分别从写作的社会背景和主人公两方面来介绍一下兔子四部曲；第三部分主要介绍一下西方宗教，具体为基督教（新教）的渊源及其对文学创作的影响，并简单分析一下厄普代克的宗教思想；第四部分，具体总结兔子一生宗教思想随其所在社会思想的变化而变化，详细分析宗教思想在四部曲中的体现。对宗教意义与影响的研究没有尽头，本文仅通过对厄普代克的四部曲中宗教意识的具体分析，给大家提供一个来了解西方宗教在文学方面的影响及体现的平台，并呼吁中国学者更深入地将对西方宗教的研究带到中国文学创作这一层面上来，为中国文学创作之路开拓出新的方向，向诺贝尔文学奖迈进。

关键词：厄普代克；《兔子四部曲》；哈里；宗教思想

Abstract

Religious traditions and sources setting profoundly roots in American society, especially Christianity, has visibly or invisibly influenced people’s daily life and spiritual world. And the most profound and specific impact is on literature creating. John Updike is an American contemporary writer who expresses consciously the religious themes and emotions in his literary works. Therefore, religion has become the main theme of his works and an important point of view for him to cut into American society. His famous novels Rabbit Tetralogy reflect his thoughts on contemporary American religion and his concerns on human’s destiny in all aspects. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the religious implications in Updike’s long novels Rabbit Tetralogy by an analysis of the hero “Rabbit” Harry’s religious changing influenced by the social background during the creation. Rabbit Tetralogy consists of four relatively independent but interrelated novels namely Rabbit, Run; Rabbit, Redux; Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest. The first part of this paper is an introduction of John Updike and his major achievements in literature and the importance of this paper; the second part a brief account of the background and hero of the tetralogy. And the third part is about the religious resources and influence in Western culture, especially Christianity and a basic description of Updike’s religious thought; the forth part is a detailed analysis of the religious thoughts reflected in the tetralogy through a summery of Harry’s religious belief changing influenced by social changing in his life time. There is no end for us to study religious influence and meaning. This paper just wants to provide another stage for Chinese readers to know more about Western religious influence and call on Chinese scholars to bring religious researches to literary creation more profoundly through a detailed analysis of Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy, which may guide Chinese literary creation into a new level towards the Nobel Prize for Literature.   

Keywords: John Updike; Rabbit Tetralogy, Harry; religious thought