Interrogation of Official History inWashington's Up from Slavery
Date
2018
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Faculty of Art in English
Abstract
The interaction of history and literature has been always an important subject
among literary scholars. One of the newest approaches in the field of literary
criticism is New Historicism. In this almost new way of analysis, not only history
affects literature but also literature could be effective in understanding history. So,
the relationship between literature and history is reciprocal. This research paper is
an attempt to find traces of new historicity in Booker Taliaferro Washington's Up
from Slavery by the help of the theories and ideas given by new historicist thinkers
like: Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt and Harold Arams Vaesser .In this text,
Powerful people dominate lower class people by creating discourse called power in
Foucauldian notion of new historicism. It is shown that the margin of society, the
blacks have own discourses as whites have. There are subversive voices which resist
the dominant culture through which they open a space for the other black men in
order to show up themselves. Power as a social energy does not always belong to the
whites who have imposing discourse but the blacks also have their own power too is
the major finding of this research
Description
Keywords
New Historicism, Power-politics, Discrimination, Resistance