Magical Realism in Neo-Slave Narratives: an Analysis of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad
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2023-01-31
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en
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‘Slavery resonates in the entire oeuvre of African American literature’ according to Timothy Spaulding. The subject of slavery being explored in so-called neo-slave narratives. These are contemporary novels that use or reinvent features from original slave narratives to emphasize the continued effects of slavery in the present.
A recurring theme in neo-slave narratives is the presence of magical or supernatural elements that are interwoven into an otherwise realistic story. These novels are written in the genre of magical realism, a term that has been discussed for decades by the people such as of Alejo Carpentier, Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris, and Amaryll Chanady.
This thesis examines two neo-slave narratives in the magical realism genre (Toni Morrison's Beloved and Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad) and analyzes the use of the magical or supernatural elements in the novels.
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Faculteit der Letteren