An Analysis Of William Styron's The Confessions Of Nat Turner From The Perspective Of New Historicism

As the third novel published by William Styron, The Confessions of Nat Turner has received heated controversies because of its "distortion of history." With New Historicism as the theoretical basis, this thesis seeks to study William Styron and his The Confessions of Nat Turner in the social and historical context of its production and reception, to explore the active relationship between Styron's literary practices and their sociohistorical contexts.Applying Louis Montrose's theory of "the textuality of history and historicity of text," this thesis seeks to analyze the New Historicist's tendency of this novel. As far as "the textuality of history" is concerned, Styron took the form of first-person narration and non-linear narration, telling the story from the perspective of the slave, to imply the "inaccuracy" of Gray's version of Nat Turner. Styron also made the imaginative revision of the details about Turner's life with the purpose of fitting for his own construction of Turner's story. Besides, the histories which Styron's supporters and opponents respectively constructed on the basis of this novel were quite different. This thesis proposes that this way of construction and the divergence of readers' reception arise from and, in turn, indicate the subjectivity in historical constructions which the New Historicists emphasize. With regards to "the historicity of the text," this text was affected by white hegemonic discourse and was engaged with the 1960s black politics. The reception of this novel was also shaped by the Black Power discourse. Besides, deep down Styron's Confessions, the determinist symbols suggested New Historicist's same pessimistic attitudes towards the subversive function of literary text. However, The Confessions as a text also had the function of shaping history. It functioned to reaffirm the white in power and to provide a model for a new racial interrelationship.