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Type of Document Dissertation Author Wholuba, Anita P. URN etd-07092007-115312 Title A Generation of Witnesses: Neo-Testimonial Practices in Flight to Canada, Dessa Rose, Beloved, Kindred, and The Chaneysville Incident Degree Doctor of Philosophy Department English, Department of Advisory Committee
Advisor Name Title Maxine L. Montgomery Committee Chair Darryl Dickson-Carr Committee Member Dennis Moore Committee Member Maxine Jones Committee Member Keywords
- Ishmael Reed
- Sherley Anne Williams
- Toni Morrison
- Octavia Butler
- David Bradley
- Neo-Testimony
- Slavery
- Neo-Slave Narratives
Date of Defense 2007-07-02 Availability unrestricted Abstract Scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. observes that “fact and fiction have always exerted a reciprocal effect on each other” (“Authenticity” 29). Authors of neo-slave narratives – postmodern renderings of the slave experience – illustrate this reciprocation as they engage in the inventive (re)telling of historical events from the privileged vantage of the present. This study examines the role imagination plays in reconstructing a marginalized, forgotten past. Additionally, this study discerns the neo-testimonial patterns – the narrative techniques inspired by the languages, experiences, and memories of the African diaspora – that the neo-slave narrative authors employ as they merge history with imagination in the creation of a fictionalized history.Although critics have already noted the existing relationship between history and fiction in these narratives, how authors finesse the line between history and imagination deserves closer examination. This study looks carefully primarily at Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada, Sherley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Octavia Butler’s Kindred, and David Bradley’s The Chaneysville Incident. By examining the dynamics of the commingling of history and imagination in these narratives, this study contributes to an understanding of the role of rememory and/or embellishment in the neo-slave narrative (sub)genre.
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