Historicity As A Defense For The Marginalized In The Public Burning

Robert Coover (1932- ), as a notable practitioner of literary postmodernism and metafiction, is highly regarded and known for his treatment with myth, religion, history, fiction and fairy tale, and variety of his prose style in his fictional works. The Public Burning, regarded as his masterpiece, demonstrates his concern both for his innovative narrative strategies and humanity. The novel has received mixed reviews since its publication. The negative criticism, however, cannot shadow the novel's outstanding features and its significance. The Public Burning catches the sight of many critics for the postmodern narrative strategies and political elements involved in it. Yet critics divorce its postmodern features with its morality, no systematic and detailed analysis has been made combine both to reveal his ideas and humanism.The thesis, therefore, intends to make a tentative analysis of Coover on how to express his humanism about the marginalized by connecting the historiographic metafiction features and morality in The Public Burning. Interpreted in the context of postmodern theories, history in The Public Burning is used as a defense for the marginalized by Coover. It explores history as a kind of discourse through its historiographic metafictional narrative strategies and as a kind of dominant ideology through human intervention, both of which shatters the authority of history in traditional sense. Based upon it, the novel subtly exposes how the marginalized are sacrificed, so as to defend them in the special historical morality.Chapter One discusses history as a discourse in The Public Burning. Through its historiographic metafictional narrative and Richard Nixon's self-reflexive voice, the authority of history is subverted and its subjectivity is highlighted. Chapter Two is mainly about the history as the dominant ideology through the examinations of history as a process of selection and exclusion and Uncle Sam's director role in The Public Burning. Chapter Three explores how the marginalized are victimized in history, particularly as evident in the scapegoat images of the Rosenberg and Richard Nixon's paradoxical position, both the insider and the outsider of the circle of power.Based on what Coover has dealt with history, it is reasonable that he uses history to defend the marginalized in The Public Burning by combining his historiographic metafictional narrative strategies with his humanity.