Apocryphal history and creative anachronism in Colton Whitehead’s the Underground Railroad.
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2021-08-30
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en
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The thesis focuses on the critically acclaimed novel written by American author Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad. This thesis will try to answer how Colson Whitehead uses the Postmodern tactics of apocryphal history and creative anachronism in The Underground Railroad to challenge how slavery, black, and American history are remembered in 21st century America and uses the novel as a case study. This thesis argues that Whitehead uses the apocryphal metaphor of the literal underground railroad to convey the dark history of America’s behavior towards the African American community. While concurrently, the anachronisms in the novel link the dark history to current mistreatments of the same community.
Keywords: Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, Postmodern historical fiction, Postmodernism, history, apocryphal history, creative anachronism, metaphor
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