Historical Writing And Humanistic Concern In The Known World

As one of the most prominent African American writers in modern American literary circle,Edward P.Jones incorporates the widest range of possible literary techniques to represent the history,greatly enriches the aesthetic expression of ordinary lives and pioneers’ human nature theme marked by the dispassionate mode.The year2003 witnessed Jones’ s plunge into novel writing and publication of his epic literature The Known World.In all his work,Jones presents a highly detailed realism based on reality and successfully rejoins elements of literature and history that have become separated from each other in American literature.Many critics praised Jones for reproducing such a little-known historical phenomenon about slavery in it and regarded it as one of the best novels about slavery in American literature.In terms of theoretical support,the thesis resorts to new historicism theory to analyze Jones’ s The Known World because Jones’ s fiction itself represents the turbulent slavery history that aims at exploring the intertextuality between history and text and redefines the age.Meanwhile,the study argues the complexity of human beings in slavery and the influence of juxtaposing,deconstructing and reconstructing history on American history.Apart from the introduction and conclusion,the thesis falls into four chapters.Chapter One relies mainly on the background and development of New Historicism.Besides that,three characteristics of New Historicism,the juxtaposition,deconstruction and reconstruction of history are represented one by one.Chapter Two discusses the juxtaposition of historical events and the text,from Henry’s plantation to the entire southern slavery society,aiming to free slavery from the binary opposition of black and white and explore the complexity of human nature.Chapter Three compares the characters in the novel with the real man in history or other typical characters in classic slavery novels to analyze the reason why person choose to oppress other persons.Therefore,the thesis plays an important role in calling for people to pay attention to focus on the justifiable right of survival and freedom of each human being.Jones also expressed that only when slavery is abolished can we truly build national identity and achieve equality between people through this work,which means no one is authorized to own or oppress others in any time.Chapter Four revolves around Jones’ s narrative methods to highlight author’s humanistic consciousness and humanistic feelings.The multiple perspectives and nonlinear narration provide a complete and comprehensive history under slavery.The final part briefly summarizes the main points discussed in the thesis and provides an explanation of how Jones’ s humanistic concerns interact with his stylistic expression and thus lays the foundation for a greater understanding of his writings.All in all,analyzing the text from the perspective of New Historicism allows the humanistic theme of the text to be better expressed,the author’s artistic skills to be perfectly presented,and the meaning of the work to be extended fully.