A Deconstructive Interpretation Of The Known World From The Perspective Of Neo-slave Narrative

Edward P.Jones(1950 —)is an outstanding African American novelist in the twentieth century.Once published,his second masterpiece The Known World has aroused wide acclaim among critics.Revolving around the death of the black slaveholder Henry Townsend,the novel represented the panorama of Virginia under the control of slavery in the American South before the Civil War.As a narrative of slavery,The Known World does not blindly inherit the characteristics from the traditional slave narratives,but challenges the traditional historiography of American slavery,radically revising the readers’ memories of slavery and the writings about slavery.Guided by the theory of the neo-slave narrative and based on the close reading of The Known World,this thesis aims to argue that The Known World deconstructs the canon of traditional slave narrative from three aspects: the personae,the fictional and mysterious elements,and the diversified narrative progressions.In terms of the personae,Jones breaks the clear-cut distinction which can be drawn between the white and the black,the oppressor and the oppressed in the traditional slave narratives,and opens up a shocking picture of the American South under slavery: black people can become slave owners,and white people can become slaves as well.In terms of the fictional and mysterious elements,by analyzing the imaginary geography background,the souls of decedents,the legendary folktales,and the mysterious events,Jones puts forward his doubt about the traditional slave narratives’ technique that overvalues the authenticity.In terms of the narrative progression,the novel challenges the stereotyped narrative progression of “literacy-identity-freedom” in the traditional slave narratives.By describing a variety of experiences and choices of the characters,Jones constructs diverse narrative modes in the novel,and hence criticizes the irrationality of the stereotyped progression.The thesis concludes that,by deconstructing the contents and form of the traditional slave narrative,in The Known World,Jones reclaims those unknown portions of the slave experience that are suppressed and consequently removed from the traditional historiography of slavery.Using these unknown portions,Jones revises and enriches the connotation of slavery and the texts about slavery;and renders a sample for the African writers to look at their history.