《初恋:一段哥特式浪漫史》是美国当代著名女作家欧茨的中篇名作。从叙述层面来看,该小说交替使用了第一人称和第二人称叙述视角,别具一格,引人入胜。从故事层面来看,该小说深刻地揭露了美国社会中的家庭解体、宗教伪善、虐待儿童、乱伦等严重问题。从文体层面来看,小说娴熟地使用了象征、比喻、拟人、矛盾修饰法等修辞手法,对于营造哥特式氛围、表现人物深层心理、探索人性的阴暗面等具有重要的作用。 “First love: a gothic romance” is the famous American writer Oates’s famous masterpiece. From the perspective of narration, the novel alternately uses the first-person and second-person narrative perspectives, which are unique and fascinating. At the story level, the novel reveals profoundly the serious problems of family dissolution, religious hypocrisy, child abuse and incest in American society. From a literary perspective, the rhetorical devices such as symbolism, metaphor, anthropomorphism and paradoxical modification are used skillfully in fiction, which plays an important role in creating a gothic atmosphere, expressing the deep psychology of the characters and exploring the dark side of human nature.