"Timeless People": The Development of the Ancestral Figure in Three Novels by Alice Walker

Authors

  • Jana Heczková

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5283/copas.104

Abstract

The concept of the ancestral figure is one of the important aspects of African American literature. The paper traces the development of the concept in three novels by Alice Walker, concentrating mainly on the imagery Walker employs for the personification of the ancestral.

Author Biography

Jana Heczková

Jana Heczková received her M.A. in English and History from Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, in 2005. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis on the topic of memory in texts by contemporary African American and Native American writers at Masaryk University. Her research interests include the historical experience of minorities and colonized peoples in the Anglophone world. She focuses on how any ensuing cultural confrontations between minority and majority cultures affect literary texts in terms of their ability to present the past. Her research interest also extends to issues of cultural memory and historical trauma in general.

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How to Cite

Heczková, Jana. “‘Timeless People’: The Development of the Ancestral Figure in Three Novels by Alice Walker”. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, vol. 9, Mar. 2012, doi:10.5283/copas.104.

Issue

Vol. 9 (2008)

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal.