A Study Of Barbara Chase-Riboud's Sally Hemings From The Perspective Of New Historicism

Barbara Chase-Riboud is one of the most distinguished historical novelists in America.Her novels,written from unique narrative perspectives,almost always display an African American complex with consistent concerns about the historical ex-slaves in American.Sally Hemings is a controversial historical novel,which took the scandal of the third president of United States Thomas Jefferson and a woman slave called Sally Heming as prototype.With its themes built upon a national taboo,the novel has sparked severe controversies among readers,historians and critics alike,and it has been scrutinized from varied perspectives:feminism,neo-salve narrative,racial and gender violence,fiction and historical truth dichotomy,among others.Drawing from the insights of new historicism,in particular Louis Montross's concept of "textu.ality of history and historicity of texts," this thesis aims at an in-depth exploration of the interaction between history and text in the novel.Firstly,by the notion of "textuality of history," this thesis tries to analyze how the writer use the strategy of representation,elimination and subversion to deconstruct and recreat history so as to construct her own historiography,creating thereby a text that offers a different version of events for readers,challenges and revises authoritative history of American on slavery and gives voice to the ex-slaves that were historically kept muted.Secondly,by the notion of'"historicity of texts," this thesis tries to demonstrate how the writer conduct parallel dialogue with white authoritative history,arguing that the novel subverts the scandal of Jefferson-Sally,allowing readers to roam into a reorganized,reconstructed,and rehistoricized African American history,a history written with African Americans in flesh and blood and with ex-slave records resounding with the very different voices of the ex-slaves in lieu of those of the official historians.In view of the dearth of scholarly attention to this novel in China,this thesis is but an attempt to take the first step to interpret Sally Hemings from the perspective of new historicism in order to draw more follow-up attention on the novel and to contribute to the further understanding of African-American literature in general and American's multifold and complicated racial relation in particular.