Date of Award
1997
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
Lewis, Krishnakali
Abstract
This thesis examines the first-person narrator's development of an autonomous identity, which is characterized by the individual's self-interest on the one hand and social engagement on the other, in the following novels: Jamaica Kincaid, Annie John (1983), Bharati Mukherjee, Jasmine (1989), and Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990). Examination focuses on autobiographical moments in which language discloses identity development as each narrator employs a unique vocabulary and rhetorical strategies to build and maintain autonomous identity, establish social relationships, and infuse life with personal and collective meaning. Recurrent vocabularies and rhetoric produce narrative voices of distinction as well as of similarity in the negotiation of self and collective interests in a world of social and cultural structures that circumscribe identity.
Extent
98 p.
Recommended Citation
Schlosser, Donna J., "Recurring vocabularies: Narrating voices in "Anne John", "Jasmine", and "Middle Passage"" (1997). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1990 - 1999. 1215.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_4/1215
Identifier
FADT15386
Comments
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1997.|Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters