James Baldwin’s Negotiation:a New Historicist Approach To Go Tell It On The Mountain

With new historicism as its theoretical basis, this thesis seeks to analyze James Baldwin’s negotiation consciousness embodied in Go Tell It on the Mountain and his self-fashioning process shaping his negotiation. First, through the analysis of the story and the characters in the novel, it explicates Baldwin’s "negotiation", showing how, as an Africa-American writer, Baldwin deals with the nuanced facets of religion, racism and patriarchy:on one hand, he exposes the narrowness of people’s religious faith, the infestation of racism and the inveteracy of patriarchy and tries to resist and subvert those ideologies; on the other hand, he also tries to contain his impulse of subversion, a move implying his conflicting consciousness and helplessness with the dominant ideology. Then, it explores the writer’s negotiation consciousness, arguing that Baldwin’s negotiation is actually a product of his "self-fashioning" during which the personal identity is shaped and matured. Baldwin, when forming his "self", is under the influence of the black church, the society and his family, which thus shape him into a person with negotiation consciousness with the social ideology. In effect, this negotiation is arguably not a compromise but the embodiment of the author’s responsibility and the works’ complexity. Using this unique writing style, Baldwin not only reveals his inner conflict and the complexity of the society, but also reflects the distinct feature of that era.