By Ellie Valentine
Author Biography:
Ellie Valentine is a third-year student of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. She is Deputy Editor-In-Chief at ESLJ, and writes freelance for other university publications. She is currently enjoying reading texts that play around with conventional forms of narrative, pushing literature to its limits. When not reading/ writing/ editing, she is often found in the kitchen, chatting in a coffee shop, or with her dog.
Read the full essay here:
“Literature favours certain voices and, by extension, marginalises others”
In this essay, Ellie compares and contrasts the theoretical frameworks presented in Saidiya Hartman’s Venus in Two Acts and Catherine Gallagher’s introductory chapter to her book Practicing New Historicism. She analyses in detail the approaches of both texts to history’s relationship to literature, arguing that texts will always reflect and perpetuate the power dynamics prevalent in contemporary society. Hartman’s work comes from a Critical Race Theory perspective specifically, recognising that female black voices have been typically silenced throughout narratives of the Atlantic Slave Trade. By recognising literature as a cultural artefact, Gallagher and Hartman both explore ways of rewriting narratives to give voice to those previously denied it, though Hartman achieves this in a much more practical way than Gallagher.
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