Intertextualizing Collective American Memory

Intertextualizing Collective American Memory: Southern, African American and Native American

This study of collective American memory exposes the historical phenomenon of self-directed American imperialism, still frequently ignored or denied in the United States. Over the course of the 250 years of its history, this has taken the form of African American slavery, thwarted black motherhood, same-race slavery (both white and African American) as well as the extermination of indigenous American peoples. On the literary level, the study helps to broaden, or even modify, the present perspective on the oeuvres of four major American writers, i. e., William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Louise Erdrich, and Cormac McCarthy, by pointing to the intertwining of their themes, motifs, and techniques of writing to form an intricate pattern of the intertextualized collective memory of the American nation.

Auteur
Grayna Maria Teresa Branny is Associate Professor at the Ignatianum University in Kraków, Poland. She has almost 100 publications to her name, mostly in Southern studies, Joseph Conrad studies, African American literature and Native American literature.