Intersections And Innovations

The African American writer Ernest J. Gaines is widely acclaimed as "one of the most naturally gifted storytellers." His experiences and writing make him the typical representative of American Southern literature after Faulkner. His works presents a picture of the century-long African American's history and their living condition and articulates his sincere love of the black culture and his reflection on the racial issues for the American.The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Gaines's most well-known and representative work, is generally regarded as an effort to rewrite the history of slaves in neo-slave narrative genre. While neo-slave narrative works, especially those by female writers, have in recent years increasingly garnered critical attention abroad, those by the black male writers, especially Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, remains relatively understudied and undervalued despite its contribution to the genre. Through a sustained textual analysis of Gaines's parody and his subversion of the slave narrative in terms of plot, character, theme and narrative strategies, the present thesis seeks to explore the neo-slave narrative features in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, aiming at contributing to discussions on the textual features and thematic concerns in the neo-slave narrative.