Rethinking Historical Realism: Catholicism and Spirit Possession in Ernest Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Salius, Erin Michael

doi:10.1353/cal.2015.0076

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

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“…Its first-person narration was so convincing, in fact, that countless readers and even a few journalists regarded the book as genuine testimony of a living source, similar to the works Progress Administration interviews of former slaves conducted in the 1930s." (Salius, 2018) In addition to what is detailed above, Daniel Tia's article titled "Discursive Heterogeneity in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines" shows how biased colonial discourse is. Building upon Paul Grice's maxims, Tia points out how Gaines's slave characters transgress the biblical truth.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transgressive Forms in Gainesian Fiction

Tia

2023

EJLLL

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Anchored in black slavery, Gaines’s novel has a historical and inventive feature. On the one hand, it is characterized by its rejection of the European artistic tradition and on the other hand, by its choice for deconstructive aesthetics. On the generic level, its narrative weave suffers from a normative crisis; the norms of autobiography undergo a functional and substantial alteration, giving way to ethno-biography. Thus, the black community’s painful history is revitalized by a female voice. That narrative authority takes a step forward by making the impossible possible, reconstructing the African descents’ past, and challenging the Whites’ misrepresentation of Blacks. Symbolically, the prejudices previously held against black women are destabilized in favor of a panegyric picture, which epitomizes the latter’s determination and audacity. Female characters are illustrated as an acting force opposed to colonial ethics, questioning the colonial authority not to replace it, but to undermine it with a view to establishing a new, flexible order, which offers them a reliable way out. Through that paradigmatic renewal, black females are depicted as vital interlocutors from whom the experience of altruism, freedom, and equality takes root and helps to construct justice in American society. In the novel under consideration, the use of transgressive values exemplifies the loss of the absolutist bearings of modernism to the detriment of plurality, difference, and coexistence. A further study of the features and ideological scope of that postcolonial era characterized by the subversion of tradition seems to be advantageous. Thus, the use of deconstructive criticism as a methodological tool will contribute to digging into two points, namely subverting the naming process and challenging the colonial authority.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transgressive Forms in Gainesian Fiction

Tia

2023

EJLLL

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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Rethinking Historical Realism: Catholicism and Spirit Possession in Ernest Gaines’s The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman

Cited by 1 publication

References 15 publications

Transgressive Forms in Gainesian Fiction

Transgressive Forms in Gainesian Fiction

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