In John Henry Days (2001), Colson Whitehead develops a hermeneutic in which the experiences of three generations of tourists, all in search of the folk hero John Henry, become ways of reading and rediscovering the forgotten history of the African-American experience from which John Henry arose. In tracing the intermingled narratives of Dr. Guy Johnson, Mr. Street, J. Sutter and Pamela Street, Whitehead foregrounds the epistemological and ontological methods by which tourists shape meaning from their experiences, confronting the postmodern dilemma of a history which is at once infinitely appropriable and far too complex to be captured in any single reading. Ultimately, Whiteheads solution to this problem of postmodern historicism is found in the characters who write themselves into the legend of John Henry, adding their own stories to the vast corpus of the John Henry tradition through their writings, collections, and acts.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06072006-185527 |
| Date | 29 June 2006 |
| Creators | Hagood, Charlotte Amanda |
| Contributors | Professor Paul Young, Professor Lynn Enterline |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-06072006-185527/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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