叙述时间视角下《泄密的心》的效果美学

The Effect Aesthetics in The Tell-Tale Heart from the Perspective of Narrative Time

摘要: 《泄密的心》(The Tell-Tale Heart)是埃德加·爱伦·坡(Edgar Allan Poe)创作的心理恐怖小说，讲述主人公因对老人产生莫名仇恨而将其杀害，并最终在心跳声的压迫下精神崩溃、自首的故事。小说通过细致的心理描写与怪诞氛围的营造，真切展现出主人公理性思绪与情绪失衡彼此交织的精神状态，让读者沉浸在复杂又极具张力的情绪体验之中。本文以热奈特叙事学中的叙述时间理论为基础，结合时序、时距、频率三个维度，对《泄密的心》的时间编排与叙事结构进行分析，探究时间变形在恐怖氛围营造、心理描写深化以及情绪传递中的作用。小说通过对叙述时间的灵活调整，打破了传统线性叙事的时间安排，不仅增强了文本的紧张感与阅读沉浸感，也更加立体地展现了主人公复杂而扭曲的心理变化。读者既能直接感受到人物的恐惧与精神崩溃，也能够从叙述时间的变化中体会其心理演变过程，从而进一步拓展了心理恐怖小说的艺术表现力和阐释深度。

Abstract: The Tell-Tale Heart is a psychological horror story written by Edgar Allan Poe. It tells the story of a narrator who murders an old man out of an inexplicable hatred and eventually breaks down under the torment of the old man’s imagined heartbeat, finally confessing to the police. Through detailed psychological depiction and the creation of a grotesque atmosphere, the story immerses readers in a terrifying experience where reason and madness coexist. Drawing on Gérard Genette’s theory of narrative time, this paper examines the narrative structure and temporal arrangement in The Tell-Tale Heart from the perspectives of order, duration, and frequency, exploring how temporal distortion contributes to the construction of horror, the deepening of psychological portrayal, and the transmission of emotional tension. The study finds that Poe’s flexible manipulation of narrative time breaks away from traditional linear storytelling, intensifying both suspense and the reader’s sense of immersion while presenting the narrator’s increasingly distorted psyche in a more vivid and complex manner. Readers are able not only to directly experience the narrator’s growing fear and madness, but also to perceive the process of psychological transformation through shifts in narrative time, thereby revealing the broader artistic potential and interpretive depth of psychological horror fiction.