Edward P. Jones The Known World 2003

The Known World Edward P. Jones 

• Written in the early 21st century

• Historical fiction

• Similar narrative concerns of Peo, Melville, Brockden Brown, Nabocov, Silko

• Drama plays out in black man enslaving black people

• Set in the past but to reflect on the present and the future 

What is at stake writing a novel about slavery?

• Already many novels (fiction and nonfiction) about slavery and slave narratives 

  • What does this work in connection with these texts 

• Tendency to impose modern ideas on the narrative/characters

  • This didn’t happen in the novel, stick well to the time 

  • Homage to the history of the slave narrative 

    • Example: when narrator leaps forward in time and references more modern things or late 1800s 

  • Slave narrative burdened by needing to tell the truth 

    • Because this is fiction that is not completely necessary 

Narrator’s presentation of the violence of slavery

• Puts the white enslaver in the scene and uneasily tells the story of mentorship (white man teaching black man how to be a master 

• Differences between this and traditional slave narratives

  • This is fiction (different form of storytelling)

    • Manipulates things specific to storytelling

      • Manipulates order, time, and frequency 

Paragraph example: 

• What is happening to moses 

• Narrator demonstrating the stakes and harm that is done without explicitly stating it 

• Animals as a way to supersede human emotions and thought 

• Moment an enslaved person’s existence comes into conflict

  • Who a slave knows them to be compared to how their master sees them to be 

• Why does the narrator demonstrate the violence done upon a son 

  • Example of how slavery and white supremacy get away with it 

    • Form of black people harming each other 

Augustus and his walking sticks

• Beginning of his freedom and independence 

• Work of art and also a practical things 

  • In the narrative presentation also about this in the way its presented 

    • Ekphrastic 

    • Describing the piece of art (but in this case it is describing violence)

• Walking sticks are way that Ritah is given freedom 

  • Connection between the irish and the black in america

    • Enslaved history of the irish 

• The creativity of repetition

  • “Don’t send me back”

    • Each time its said it means something different 

Augustus Townsend’s death

• He’s “illegally” enslaved once more after gaining his freedom

• Evil characters find a way to make money off of him

• Ends up on the georgia-florida line

  • Importance of the florida line

    • Up until early 19th century it was a place of refuge for natives and slaves as it was spanish land 

• Supernatural characteristics of the novel also seen as part of contemporary superheroes narratives

  • Disability angles 

Nonhuman animals at key moments

• Ex. dogs throughout the narrative 

  • Easy to ignore, but also intentionally put there

    • Non-human witnesses to the violence that is happening 

Moments in the narrative that “give away” what is going to happen

• Ex. any of times “would” is used 

Expository moments - purpose?

• Where else on the syllabus is this seen?

  • Pale Fire

• Takes you out of the story 

  • Feels  a bit like an article 

  • Out of the fiction genre and placed into a different one 

• Why take the reader out of the story?

  • Novel about how we conceptualize slavery as well 

    • To do this you need to be taken out of the narrative a bit to fully understand it 

    • Extent to which “the known world” is also a part of the plot but also the title of the novel 

      • Map that is shown in the jail cell is also called “the known world”

Jones and narrator being elusive to shared histories of oppression

Transformation of a character to demonstrate what slavery makes a person instead of what they really are