Présentation de l'éditeur
Written as the recollection of a 110-year-old woman, "Miss Jane", The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman is the narrative of African-American history from the Declaration of Emancipation to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Gaines's masterpiece is meant to represent the interpretation of the events of a century through the central character's uneducated but street-wise vision. Carefully built on a historical structure, the book relies on a well-mastered stylistic technique that mixes several literary genres, providing the reader with a deep insight into the African American experience. Inevitably, such central issues as "black pride", human dignity, ethics or the nature of freedom are raised and the reader finds himself actively involved in the reconstruction of a black subject whom "history" had relegated in the footnotes of a "Manifest Destiny" written by revisionist ideologues.
Biographie de l'auteur
Patrick Badonnel, former chair of the "Agrégation"; is full professor of American literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University (Paris lll), where he teaches seminars on the African American subject and on psychoanalytical criticism. He is the author of several books on American contemporary writers (with Professor C. Maisonnat) and bas written extensively on William Styron's work. Also interested in the short story he is the author (with C Maisonnat) of La Nouvelle Anglo-saxonne. Initiation à une lecture psychanalytique (Hachette Supérieur, 1998).
