Date of Award
8-16-2024
Document Type
Open Access Thesis
Department
English Language and Literatures
First Advisor
Tara Powell
Abstract
The ecogothic is a lens through which to engage memory, southern constructivism and identity, environmental intervention, and the literature of the American Southeast. This project establishes a framework of literary criticism that defines the ecogothic, interprets memory as truth imagined, and identifies the position of memory in the environment as a construction with which it is necessary to grapple to understand identity. This framework, compiled of existing and original scholarship, is then applied to three contemporary swamp narratives written by three different southern women writers. The swamp setting creates a unique microcosm of gothic liminality, neither fully land nor water, where all aspects of reality, time, truth, and landscape are imbued with an inherent murkiness. The three novels Power (1998) by Linda Hogan, Swamplandia! (2011) by Karen Russell, and The Past is Never (2019) by Tiffany Quay Tyson each explore female coming-of-age stories set in these landscapes, where journeys of unearthing history and reconciling with memory of the past allow the respective protagonists to discover their own identities.
Rights
© 2024, Megan Caroline Brockhard Knight
Recommended Citation
Knight, M. C.(2024). Reading Ecogothic Memory in Contemporary Southern Swamp Novels. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/7837