Textbook and fairy tale: the pitfalls of didacticism in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
Keywords:
Autobiography, biography, slave narrative, fairy tale, folk tale, ideology, didacticism, history, slaveryAbstract
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman has a clear aim in sight. It is to challenge canonical American history by creating an exemplary “autobiography.” The interviewer- editor’s manipulation of the voice of an illiterate ex-slave is all the more efficacious as it is subtle and paved with good intentions. Such a pedagogical enterprise, however, involves conventional narrative choices which paradoxically end up infantilizing a very old woman and transforming her life story into a latter-day fairy tale.
References
Doyle, M. E. 2002. Voices from the Quarters: The Fiction of Ernest J. Gaines. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University.
Gaines, E. 1971. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books.
Gaines, E. July/August 1998. “I heard the voices... of my Louisiana people,” “A Conversation with Ernest Gaines,” Humanities: The Magazine for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Lejeune, P. 1980. Je est un autre. Paris: Seuil.
Lowe, J. 1995. Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi.
Michlin, M. 2005. “A Few Aspects of the Poetics of The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”. In Let Miss Jane tell the story: lectures critiques de The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, CRAFT 3, U Tours, 109-128.
Propp, V. 1968. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd edition. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Steel, F. A. (ed.) 1994. English Fairy Tales. Ware: Wordsworth Classics.
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