Date of Award
1-1-2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in English
Department
English
First Advisor
Jaime L. Harker
Second Advisor
Patrick Alexander
Third Advisor
Kathryn McKee
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This project is conceptualized through a multitude of intersecting and overlapping theories that work together to allow an examination of circulations and intersections of queerness, grotesqueries, and the haunting South. Throughout this reading of Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms and Local Color I want to think through the ways in which images and moments in the text can be queer and grotesque while also lending themselves to the images and eruptions that make up the haunting South. My reading of grotesqueries and the haunting South purposefully moves away from the Southern Gothic, rooting itself instead in a space that is much less nostalgic for the Old South, and much less interested in the narrative surrounding the fall of the South/rehashing of the Civil War, but rather is informed by critical theory that deals with ideas of hauntings, eruptions, and ghosts. My work intends to delineate the ways in which the racial violence, inequality, and unrest surrounding the South’s past refuses to ever be fully a part of the past – rather images and ideas surrounding these horrors return at the least expected moment in unexpected guises to haunt and remind the living that they will never truly die – the past is a part of and is imprinted on the present and refuses vehemently to be buried. My work is trying to let these ghosts and hauntings guide us through the works of Capote.
Recommended Citation
Savage, Jordan Alexis, "The dead rise the dead and walk among the living: An examination of the haunting South, queerness, and grotesqueries in Truman Capote's "Other Voices, Other Rooms" and "Local Color"" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1179.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1179