Show simple item record

dc.contributor.advisorFowler, Doreen
dc.contributor.authorSugimori, Masami
dc.date.accessioned2010-03-18T04:41:12Z
dc.date.available2010-03-18T04:41:12Z
dc.date.issued2009-12-04
dc.date.submitted2009
dc.identifier.otherhttp://dissertations.umi.com/ku:10634
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1808/5979
dc.description.abstractThrough exploration of William Faulkner's, James Weldon Johnson's and Nella Larsen's "passing novels," this dissertation points out that narrative representation of racial passing facilitates and compromises the authors' challenge to the white-dominant ideology of early-twentieth-century America. I reveal that, due to their inevitable dependence on language, these authors draw paradoxically on the white-dominant ideology that they aim to question, especially its system of binary racial categorization. While the "white" body of a "passing" character serves the novelists as a subversive force in white-supremacist society (which depends on the racial other to define "whiteness"), language, which is essentially ideological, traps the writers in racial binary and continually suggests that, while the character looks white, s/he is really black. Accordingly, the authors have to write under the constraints of the problem that American discourse of race must and, for the most part, does systematically suppress its own essential fictiveness.
dc.format.extent181 pages
dc.language.isoEN
dc.publisherUniversity of Kansas
dc.rightsThis item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.
dc.subjectAmerican literature
dc.subjectModern literature
dc.subjectEthnic studies
dc.subjectIdeology
dc.subjectJohnson, James Weldon
dc.subjectLanguage and narrative
dc.subjectLarsen, Nella
dc.subjectRacial passing
dc.subjectFaulkner, William
dc.titleThe Language Trap: U.S. Passing Fiction and its Paradox
dc.typeDissertation
dc.contributor.cmtememberCaminero-Santangelo, Marta
dc.thesis.degreeDisciplineEnglish
dc.thesis.degreeLevelPh.D.
kusw.oastatusna
kusw.oapolicyThis item does not meet KU Open Access policy criteria.
kusw.bibid7078713
dc.rights.accessrightsopenAccess


Files in this item

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record