Reflexive autobiography of miss
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Literary Theory and Criticism
By NASRULLAH MAMBROLon •
Inspired bygd the strong, determined character of his Aunt Augustine Jefferson, to whom the novel is dedicated, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman draws on the tradition of the slave narrative and its creative branch, the fictional autobiography. Slave narratives are essentially stories of enslavement, suffering, endurance, and escape. A formula for organizing the telling of stories by slavery’s victims was devised by abolitionists, who used anställda testimonies of escaped slaves to influence public opinion. Most accounts remained oral, but several notable exceptions were published in the nineteenth century, especially the narratives of Frederick Douglass (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, My Life and Times, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass). The artistry of his account continues to give depth and insight to the slave experience. Women’s stories were also a part of this litera
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Volume 3, No. 3, Art. 2 – September 2002
Grenzgänger Seeks Reflexive Methodology
Wolff-Michael Roth
Review Essay:
Mats Alvesson & Kaj Sköldberg (2000). Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research. London: Sage, viii + 319 pages, ISBN 0 8039 7707 7 (paperback) £ 19.99
Christiane K. Alsop (Ed.) (2001). Grenzgängerin: Bridges Between Disciplines. Eine Festschrift für Irmingard Staeuble. Heidelberg: Asanger Verlag, 315 pages, ISBN 3-89334-363-6 (paperback) DM/SFR 68,- Euro 35,-
Abstract: Reflexive Methodology reviews major strands of current thought in epistemology, philosophy, social science, and interpretive methods. The book falls short in that it neither does a thorough job reviewing the literature nor does it provide method-related advice useful to students. Grenzgängerin constitutes a collection of essays on a broad range of topics, but which are only loosely connected if at all. Drawing on DERRIDA and the notion o
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A Few Aspects of the Poetics of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
1In the wake of neo-slave narratives written by women, and particularly Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987), it is difficult to reread The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman without being conscious of what it is not: a feminine narrative in the meaning of “écriture feminine,” in which emphasis on the body and the story it tells is primordial. This can of course be explained by the narrative frame—Miss Jane, at a hundred and ten, is a somewhat prudish person,1 who is speaking to a young man; the time is the early sixties; and the novel came out in 1971, more than a generation ago. The poetics of the novel thus reflect Gaines’s own sources of inspiration: most notably, his Aunt Augusteen’s stories, her neighbors,’2 and the WPA interviews included in Lay My Burden Down.3 The result is a literary work Barry Beckhman calls “a chat: an episodic, lyrical, informal verbal chronicle” (1978, 103), which gi