Outlaw Knot-Makers : Context, Culture, and Magic Realism
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INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6" x 9" black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Information Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Aibor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 OUTLAW KNOT-MAKERS: CONTEXT, CULTURE, AND MAGIC REALISM by Edward A. Shannon A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 1995 Approved by Dissertation Advisor UMI Number: 9618165 UMI Microform 9618165 Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. Ail rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 SHANNON, EDWARD A., Ph.D. Outlaw Knot-Makers: Context, Culture, and Magic Realism. (1995) Directed by Dr. Keith Cushman 238 pp. Outlaw Knot-Makers is a study of recent Postmodernism, focusing on five works. I consider three novels-Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold. William Kennedy's Ironweed. and Toni Morrison's Beloved-and two autobiographies, Art Spiegelman's Maus and Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior. These works should most properly be considered Magic Realism. Most definitions of this genre emphasize the fantasy elements of Magic Realism, but I suggest fantasy is less important to the genre than both the historical elements of the texts and the specific relationship the works have with their ethnic, mythic, and folkloric source materials. Magic Realism has its roots in the work of Franz Kafka and the fiction of Latin America, and a defining characteristic of Magic Realism is its anxious relationship with the folk material that gives it its form. While these works (and Magic Realism in general) seem to simply elevate a particular ethnic or religious American subculture, the texts are actually quite critical of their own subcultures. The surface narratives of Magic Realism do indeed criticize the larger culture in which the subculture exists, but Magic Realism also engages in a consistently ironic treatment of the core values and aesthetic conventions of the subcultures it treats. APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation has been approved by the following committee of the Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dissertation Advisor Committee Members r, > Date of acceptance by Committee 0 Date of Final Oral Examination Acknowledgments I emphatically thank my committee (Keith Cushman, SallyAnn Ferguson, Greg Meyerson, and Lee Zacharias) for their time and support. I owe Keith Cushman a debt of honor for his patience with my many typos. Parts of this dissertation were written for classes I took with Drs. Ferguson and Meyerson, who allowed me to pursue my own interests early on. Lee Zacharias took on the responsibility of my dissertation without knowing a thing about me. She did not need or want to read another dissertation, I am sure, but she did it just the same. Lucindy Willis read and reread my manuscripts without complaint. She is a scholar and a friend, and I am forever in her debt. My English 112H, Spring 1994, students freely shared their observations about (and objections to) these books. Rita Dirks, in particular, opened up Ironweed and Beloved for me. Robbie Knott constantly encouraged me. Thanks to Denis Murphy, who began me on my literary journey over a decade ago. As ever, I owe all to my wife, Kathleen O'Brien Shannon. She is more to me than I can ever hope to express. She thinks she had little to do with this, but she is wrong. It is all her doing. Denis and Patrick, you are my inspirations. My parents, Peter and Patricia Shannon, have shown nothing but confidence in me (even when I had none). Anne O'Brien also stood by me. Finally, two giants passed from my life in 1995: Edward A. Shannon I and John A. O'Brien. They were encouragement, faith, care, and-most of all-Irish. They supported me more than they know. Now the memory of them does the same. i i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page APPROVAL PAGE ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii Preface. Myth in Modernism, Postmodernism, and Magic Realism . 1 Chapter 1. lntroduction:"the imaginative qualities of actual things": Defining Magic Realism 10 Chapter 2. "the true social realism": The Roots of Magic Realism and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold . .31 Chapter 3. "Hell, it's all true": Destructive and Redemptive Myth in William Kennedy's Ironweed 53 Chapter 4. "uncalled-for pride": Classical Myth and American History in Toni Morrison's Beloved 99 Chapter 5. "it is not the mouse who is the thief but the mousehole": The Subversive Magic Realism of Art Spiegelman's Maus . .149 Chapter 6. Conclusion: "It translated well": Magic Realism, a Fiction of Assimilation 203 APPENDIX. CONSENT FORM 238 i v Long ago in China knot-makers tied string into buttons and frogs, and rope into bell pulls. There was one knot so complicated that it blinded the knot-maker. Finally an emperor outlawed this cruel knot, and the nobles could not order it anymore. If I had lived in China, I would have been an outlaw knot-maker. -- from Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior: A Girlhood Among Ghosts V 1 Preface Myth in Modernism, Postmodernism, and Magic Realism One major characteristic of Modernism is its use of myth as a device for making social commentary. Specifically, when Modernists infuse myth into their work, their intention very often is to decry the decline of Western civilization. T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" and "Gerontion," Allen Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead," Yeats's "The Second Coming," Joyce's Ulysses, and most of William Faulkner's major works employ myth and legend to delineate a deteriorating modern age in the grip of hopelessness and sterility. Since Postmodernism defines itself-indeed finds its name-in its distance from Modernism, one should have no trouble separating the two literary movements. But the work of many Postmodern American novelists is just as mythic as that of High Modernists like Eliot and Faulkner. However, the Postmodern writers called Magic Realists incorporate myth into their work for strikingly different ends than did those Modernists who sought to somehow recoup the order that had seemingly left their world. These writers do not describe a world in decline (although the works often deal with horrific historical moments); Magic Realism uses myth and legend much more hopefully. When Magic Realists use myth to inform their imaginative narratives (both fiction and non-fiction), the result is decidedly 2 different from that seen in a High Modern novel like Faulkner's Absalom. Absalom or Jean Toomer's Cane. This study focuses on several contemporary American writers who to one degree or another embrace Magic Realism: William Kennedy, Toni Morrison, Art Spiegelman, and Maxine Hong Kingston. These artists use myth not to delineate the fall of the West but-among other ends-to elevate ethnic subcultures within American culture. Their project is narrower in scope and of a different design then that of the Moderns. In fact, some Magic Realists-like Morrison and Spiegelman-have been criticized for being overly simplistic and polemical in their elevation of "their" subcultures: these books are "politically correct," self-indulgent, and focused on righting past wrongs rather than on creating aesthetically acute texts or even recognizing the complexities of the political debates in which they engage. However, such criticism is itself too simplistic. Although the books examined here do elevate the subcultures they depict, they also do more. While Modernism criticizes mainstream Western culture's failures, Magic Realism uses myth and fabulism to isolate sub cultures and examine them from what may be called a "place of safety." That is, in these politically fragmented times, it may seem easier for a text to criticize a minority culture after demonstrating its unqualified allegiance to that same group by manipulating its myth systems and focusing on wrongs done to the 3 group in question. Latin American Magic Realists-like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, discussed in Chapter 2--gave American writers like Kennedy and Morrison a model of an "American" literature written in a non-Anglo-Saxon mythic context which could examine themes and peoples perhaps untouchable by writers outside the groups in question. Could a gentile have created Mays, which in comic book form presents that rarest of characters-fictional or otherwise-the unlikable Holocaust survivor? Could a white male gain a readership for a novel about a former slave who kills her own infant daughter? Would a novel about a group of Irish- American alcoholics and bums be accepted by Irish-Americans if the author's name was Spiegelman or Hong rather than Kennedy? The fantasy elements of these narratives act in the same way.