The Black Traumatic Writing In I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings From The Perspective Of Spatial Narrative

Maya Angelou is recognized as one of the most creative African-American women writers in modern America,and she is also an outstanding representative of contemporary American poetess.She created many excellent works that include autobiographical novels and poems.The first autobiographical novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was also known as her most famous autobiographical work.The work mainly describes little Maya Angelou’s early life experience as the prototype,which represents the embarrassing situation of the blacks under the white cultural hegemony and racism.It tells a traumatic story of marginalized groups in the era of racial discrimination.It is worth noting that the traumatic writing in the novel presents distinct spatial features.The topographical field of the characters,the chronotopic structure and the textual plot and structure presented in the novel all highlight the spatiality.This thesis combines Gabriel Zoran’s spatial theory and Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory.Based on Gabriel Zoran’s spatial narrative,this thesis analyzes the role of spatial narrative in the traumatic writing from three levels: topographical structure,chronotopic structure and textual structure.This thesis first analyzes the topographical structures as a traumatic metaphor of black racial segregation.It presents an opposite topographical landscape.The town of Stamps as a cage of apartheid,and the metropolitan of the black community as a maze of the white world,externalize the inner trauma of the characters.The chronotopic structure as a representation of the different directions of the novel’s plot tells the stories about the theme of trauma in the form of fragments,highlighting the displacement of African American,so as to achieve trauma treatment through the trauma recurrence.The textual structure includes the selectivity of language,the linearity of the text and the perspectival structure expand the dimension of trauma narrative,presenting the collective trauma of blacks and enhancing the aesthetics of trauma writing.By analyzing the significance of spatial narrative on the traumatic theme in the novel,this thesis examines the causes of traumatic memories in the text and explores the ways to alleviate trauma.Thus,it provides a way for the readers to comprehend the history of the black experiences.