{"title":"Of Gaines and Genre: Plotting the Racial Borders in Southern Louisiana","authors":"Martin Griffin","doi":"10.1353/mss.2024.a928864","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Three works of fiction by Ernest J. Gaines, each from a different phase of his career, can be classified as significant exercises in using genre norms and styles of emplotment to achieve effects that remain obscured by the very relationship to genre that the novels embody. <i>Of Love and Dust</i> (1967) and <i>A Gathering of Old Men</i> (1983) often appear to simultaneously embrace and hide the elements of genre fiction that determine their narrative moves and plot dynamics. A particular narrative tactic in the third example, <i>The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman</i> (1971), shows how Gaines deploys what one might call \"genre identity\" in his fiction as a means to complicate a conventional pattern. The realist mode of the novel, building up a perspective on Louisiana history that encompasses both the subjective and the broader collective frameworks of African American memory, is suspended briefly to give space to a subordinate narrative in a Southern Gothic mode.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":35190,"journal":{"name":"MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"MISSISSIPPI QUARTERLY","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mss.2024.a928864","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Three works of fiction by Ernest J. Gaines, each from a different phase of his career, can be classified as significant exercises in using genre norms and styles of emplotment to achieve effects that remain obscured by the very relationship to genre that the novels embody. Of Love and Dust (1967) and A Gathering of Old Men (1983) often appear to simultaneously embrace and hide the elements of genre fiction that determine their narrative moves and plot dynamics. A particular narrative tactic in the third example, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1971), shows how Gaines deploys what one might call "genre identity" in his fiction as a means to complicate a conventional pattern. The realist mode of the novel, building up a perspective on Louisiana history that encompasses both the subjective and the broader collective frameworks of African American memory, is suspended briefly to give space to a subordinate narrative in a Southern Gothic mode.
欧内斯特-J.-盖恩斯(Ernest J. Gaines)的三部小说作品,每部作品都来自他职业生涯的不同阶段,可以归类为利用类型规范和情节风格来达到效果的重要实践,而这些小说所体现的与类型的关系本身,却仍然掩盖了这些作品的效果。爱与尘埃》(Of Love and Dust,1967 年)和《老人的聚会》(A Gathering of Old Men,1983 年)似乎同时拥抱和隐藏了决定其叙事动作和情节动态的类型小说元素。第三个例子《简-皮特曼小姐自传》(1971 年)中的一种特殊叙事策略显示了盖恩斯如何在其小说中运用所谓的 "流派身份 "来使传统模式复杂化。小说的现实主义模式建立了路易斯安那州历史的视角,既包括非裔美国人的主观记忆,也包括更广泛的集体记忆框架。
期刊介绍:
Founded in 1948, the Mississippi Quarterly is a refereed, scholarly journal dedicated to the life and culture of the American South, past and present. The journal is published quarterly by the College of Arts and Sciences of Mississippi State University.