Flood Narratives in the Twenty-First-Century American Southern Literature:Taking The Tilted World and Salvage the Bones as Examples
Flood narratives,which occupy an important position in the twenty-first-century American Southern literature,are both an inheritance of the writing of disasters in Southern literary canon and a response to the environmental crisis in the present Anthropocene.This paper selects two of the most representative Southern novels anchored in flood theme in the last ten years,in order to respectively dig out the profound cultural connotations and practical significances behind the unique narrative mechanisms of the two novels.Among the works,The Tilted World,written by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly,focuses on the historical writing of the Great Flood of 1927;by presenting the flood in an embodied way,the novel revisits this important historical event,reinforces the collective memories of the flood that has been downplayed by official narratives,and reconstructs the cultural scenarios of the flood,so as to invoke people's new awareness of environmental disasters.On the other hand,Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones,based on her personal experiences during Hurricane Katrina,resorts to testimonial narratives to display human trauma in the wake of disasters;during the process,Ward integrates confusional experiences into narratives,and ultimately,by establishing the communal bonds among human beings faced with environmental disasters,heals the psychic trauma.Both novels,through flood narratives,reconnect disaster memories to current experiences,informing the readers that in face of the current deteriorating ecological environment,human beings urgently need to reshape their understanding of the relationship between man and nature,establish an awe for nature,and build an interdependent community with a shared future.Flood writings convey the ecological concerns and warnings of contemporary Southern writers,enriching the aesthetic values and ecological connotations of disaster writings in the Southern literature.
The Tilted WorldSalvage the Bonesflood narrativeshistorical writingtestimonial narratives
万方数据
维普
