Date of Award
8-1-2011
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
English
First Advisor
Fox, Robert
Abstract
This dissertation examines the imaginative ways in which three postcolonial writers overcome a fractured collective past by creating a double-voiced discourse narrative framework that allows them to envision a reality that might-have-been while acknowledging the presence of dominant discourses that are. Morrison, Condé, and Farah overlap contradictory forms in order to show that narrative boundaries are self-imposed, mythical, and arbitrary. Intersection among these differing narratives in each text creates dialogism--a balance between dominant and counter-discourse. Because the contrasting viewpoints of dominant and counter-discourse both have a historical perspective, Morrison, Condé, and Farah work to retain a delicate intertextual fabric in their novels--a fabric woven from several narratives to create a text that rests paradoxically on the task of revealing the narrative contradictions while also showing that they can't be completely separated from each other as the singular hegemonic voice argues.
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