The Master's Level Graduate Research Conference is supported by the Office of Graduate Studies.
This essay will discuss how Charles Johnson’s novel Middle Passage is a modern version of a slave narrative, and addresses issues that face the African American community in today’s society. I will employ the critical lens developed in Robert B. Stepto’s text From Behind the Veil: A Study of Afro-American Narrative. Stepto provides a theory for studying or contextualizing Afro-American literary development in terms of its intertextuality via a building block system in which each author advances the literary tropes of previous authors. Stepto presents his theory in terms of a call and response within Afro-American literature, beginning with slave narratives and presenting the development within the narrative form as the attempts or struggle to gain a true authoritative voice. I will show how Johnson’s novel has answered the call posed by previous Afro-American authors in the most thorough fashion to date, while evolving the narrative form to deal with modern issues that face the black community. I will also show how Johnson has transcended the sub-category of Afro-American literature and firmly established his work as American literature through the use of intertextuality and genre mixing.
| Presenter: | Steven Zapel (Buffalo State College) -- zapelsc01@mail.buffalostate.edu |
|---|---|
| Topic: | English - Panel |
| Location: | 216 Hartwell |
| Time: | 9:20 am (Session I) |
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