Kincaid's Carnival: Performance, Identity, and the Reader in A Small Place
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This undergraduate honors thesis, focusing on Jamaica Kincaid’s creative nonfiction memoir A Small Place, shows how readers can be transformed through identity performance in literature. This thesis reads Kincaid’s text as a literary carnival (in the sense described by the literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin) to show how Kincaid forces her Western reader to perceive himself in ways that are uncomfortable and unaccustomed—for the purpose of reconceiving his relationship to postcolonial tourist destinations like the one in which Kincaid grew up. Taking its motivation from Kincaid’s assertion that the English language is inadequate for communicating a critique of colonialism and neo-colonialism, this thesis reads Kincaid’s use of language not as a mere medium, but as a performance that requires the reader’s active involvement. Ultimately, this thesis offers an optimistic stance on literature's ability to engage us in changing ourselves, our perspectives, and our world through imaginative performance.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | September 2014 - May 15, 2015 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hubbard, Shannon Marie |
|---|
Subjects
| Subject | Postcolonial Literature |
|---|---|
| Subject | Postcolonialism |
| Subject | Colonialism |
| Subject | Kincaid |
| Subject | Bakhtin |
| Subject | Identity Performance |
| Subject | Carnivalesque |
| Subject | Reader-Response |
| Subject | Department of English |
| Subject | Stanford |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC-SA).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Hubbard, Shannon Marie. Kincaid's Carnival: Performance, Identity, and the Reader in A Small Place. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/gn114rq3473
Collection
Stanford University, Department of English, Undergraduate Honors Theses
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- smhubbard37@gmail.com
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