The Historical Writing In The Underground Railroad In The Post-racial Era

Colson Whitehead is a famous contemporary African-American writer.He has published seven novels and won the MacArthur Genius Award,Guggenheim Award,National Book Award,and other literary awards.He has won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction twice.His sixth novel,The Underground Railroad has won wide acclaim since its publication and won the National Book Award in 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2017.The novel is based on “the Underground Railroad” which is the secret passage of the slave escape during the American Abolition Movement era.The metaphorical “the Underground Railroad” is converted into a real railroad network through fantasy.The black girl Cora’s escape experience is used as a clue.The novel deeply touches the dark and violent aspects of American racism when Cora travels through different states of the United States along with the railroad transportation network.For Whitehead who is in the post-racial era,the rewriting of “the Underground Railroad” is no longer to construct a grand,unitary,and authoritative slavery history.On the contrary,Whitehead constructs a marginalized,personalized,and open-ended narrative of slavery history which triggers a dialectical thinking about slavery and freedom.Therefore,this thesis uses the historical materials of slavery in The Underground Railroad as entry and analyzes that Whitehead interweaves historicity(non-fictionality)and fictionality so that he can create a textual historical field for people to return and explore.The thesis consists of five parts:The first part is introduction part and introduces Colson Whitehead’s life experience and his novel The Underground Railroad.Then it summarizes the research status and existing problems of the novel at home and abroad.Finally,it expounds the features of New Historicism theory of Stephen Greenblatt and Hayden White.In this basis,it gives the research questions,research framework and research significance of the thesis.The first chapter to the third chapter is the discussion part of the thesis.The first chapter uses Stephen Greenblatt’s “History” and “histories” theory to interpret the history of racial persecution.Whitehead uses “histories” of the neglected black’s experience to deconstruct the “History” of racial persecution.He questions the objectivity of history.It reflects Whitehead’s marginalized historical writing.The second chapter uses HaydenWhite’s “fact” and “truth” theory to interpret historical events.Whitehead excavates the“truth” hidden in the “fact” of historical events from the voiceless black’s perspective.He questions the unicity of history.It reflects Whitehead’s polyphonic historical writing.The third chapter uses Hayden White’s “history” and “fantasy” theory to interpret the meaning of freedom.Whitehead dissolves the authoritative meaning of freedom by interweaving “history” and “fantasy”.He questions the determinacy of history.It reflects Whitehead’s open-ended historical writing.The last part is the conclusion part.It is a comprehensive conclusion of the thesis.Whitehead deconstructs the objectivity,unicity and determinacy of the traditional history and constructs a marginalized,polyphonic and open-ended history.It shows Whitehead’s non-essentialist historical writing ideals which is discrepant,plural and open-ended in post-racial era.