On Narrative Strategies Embodied in The Known World under New Historical Perspective

With the multiple clues, rambling narrative and multidimensional architecture, Jones, in The Known World, constructs a fairly layered, three-dimensional world and presents a panorama of the entire slave society. The so-called mongline History before is decomposed into a number of linear histories, and history which was non-narrative and non-representational is dismantled into histories narrated by many single narrators. Cultural discourse and historical discourse blend together. Jones shares the same conception on history and literature with New Historical critics who emphasize the complex mix-and-match interaction between history and text.