When History is Narrativized:The Self Between Faction and Fiction in Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed (2013)

Mohand Lhadj, Karima; Bendjeddou, Mohamed Yazid

El-Tawassol التواصل
Volume 26, Numéro 2, Pages 540-551
2023-02-28

When History Is Narrativized:the Self Between Faction And Fiction In Joyce Carol Oates’s The Accursed (2013)

Authors : Mohand Lhadj Karima . Bendjeddou Mohamed Yazid .

Abstract

This article tackles one of the basic theories of human identity that is definitely the individual’s sense of “self". By analyzing it from a purely postmodernist perspective, the ‘Self’ is considered as multifarious and unstable. In The Accursed, one of Joyce Carol Oates’s most outstanding novels, the idea of the self as homogeneous and cohesive is denounced through exploring the ‘lives’ and ‘selves’ of a number of American historical figures. Mainly by ‘narrativizing history,’ Oates fuses fictional and fantastical elements within the very ‘real’ moments in history in an attempt to critically unveil some influential ideological assumptions of the time.