Tracing the Past Through (Ab)using Memories: Gender, Race, and Southern Histories in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Toni Morrison’s Paradise
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
You, Yann-ru
Abstract
By juxtaposing William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929) and Toni Morrison’s Paradise (1997) in the same historical context, the thesis will respectively examine the North-centered national history of the U.S., the historical narrative of white male Southerners, and the southern history constructed by black men in the two novels--so as to critically scrutinize the problematic nature and the political construction of official histories, as well as how the gendered and racial Others are intriguingly positioned in these texts. Both set in a turbulent, historical transformation of the South, the two novels either portray or consist of problematic narratives on history--though the political struggles in these narratives are manifested on various levels and performed in different ways. Approaching the texts mainly with Paul Ricoeur’s idea of “obligated memory,” Pierre Nora’s notion of les lieux de memoire, and Michel Foucault’s conception of counter-memory, the thesis aims to explore the problematic construction, political operation, and inevitable breakdown of the official historical narratives in these novels. Moreover, the association between southern histories and gender/race issues will likewise be carefully discussed here. Besides looking into the gendered and racial exclusion of official histories, I will simultaneously investigate the marginalized characters’ paradoxical yet significant role as the potential counter-forces against such dominant discourses. By doing so, this thesis is going to further illustrate the very possibility of breaking up official histories from within, as well as the ambivalent role that the gendered and racial Others have played in both the construction and subversion of official discourses on southern histories.
Subjects
《聲音與憤怒》
《樂園》
南方歷史
記憶場域
義務性記憶
對抗記憶
Type
thesis
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