Internal Colonialism and the Wasteland Theme in Ron Rash's Serena

  1. Constante González Groba
Revista:
Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

ISSN: 0210-6124

Ano de publicación: 2020

Volume: 42

Número: 2

Páxinas: 119-137

Tipo: Artigo

DOI: 10.28914/ATLANTIS-2020-42.2.06 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openDialnet editor

Outras publicacións en: Atlantis: Revista de la Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos

Resumo

Ron Rash’s Serena (2008) is about the clash between northern industrialists who cut timber in southern Appalachia and conservationists who want the area converted into a national park. Set during the Depression, it also addresses our own times of unchecked greed and environmental holocaust. This article relates the situation of internal colonialism, which turns the region into a sacrifice zone, with the theme of the wasteland. The latter is related in the novel not only to T. S. Eliot’s poem but also to other works that Rash acknowledgesas influences, including Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby and Christopher Marlowe’s tragedies about the will to power. Characterized by what Erich Fromm calls the exploitative orientation, Serena Pemberton wields hard power and embodies the rapaciousness of economy, in contrast to a local female character, who stands for ecology and soft power.

€ Ver financiamento

Información de financiamento

8 The research for this article was funded by the research network “Rede de Lingua e Literatura Inglesa e Identidade III” (ED431D2017/17, Xunta de Galicia) and the research group “Discourse and Identity” (ED341C, 2019/001, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela).

Financiadores

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Bartels, Emily C. and Emma Smith, eds. 2013. Christopher Marlowe in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
  • Barthes, Roland. 1984. Writing Degree Zero & Elements of Semiotics. Translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith. London: Jonathan Cape.
  • Batteau, Allen. 1983a. “Rituals of Dependence in Appalachian Kentucky.” In Batteau 1983b, 142-67.
  • Batteau, Allen, ed. 1983b. Appalachia and America: Autonomy and Regional Dependence. Lexington: UP of Kentucky.
  • Beilfuss, Michael J. 2015. “Rootedness and Mobility: Southern Sacrifice Zones in Ron Rash’s Serena.” Mississippi Quarterly 68 (3-4): 377-97.
  • Bennett, Barbara. 2018. “‘Beyond Gender’: Subversion and the Creation of Chaos in Serena and Macbeth.” In Wilhelm and Vernon 2018, 137-47.
  • Berry, Wendell. 1990. “Nature as Measure.” In Shoemaker 2019a, 757-63.
  • Berry, Wendell. 2005. “Compromise, Hell!” In Shoemaker 2019b, 363-68.
  • Berry, Wendell. 2010. “Faustian Economics.” In Shoemaker 2019b, 450-60.
  • Bicknell, John W. 1973. “The Waste Land of F. Scott Fitzgerald.” In Eble 1973, 67-80.
  • Brown, Joyce Compton. 2009. Review of Serena, by Ron Rash. Appalachian Heritage 37 (1): 61-64.
  • Brown, Joyce Compton and Mark Powell. 2010. “Ron Rash’s Serena and the ‘Blank and Pitiless Gaze’ of Exploitation in Appalachia.” North Carolina Literary Review 19: 70-89.
  • Bruccoli, Matthew J., ed. 1985. New Essays on The Great Gatsby. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
  • Claxton, Mae Miller and Rain Newcomb, eds. 2017. Conversations with Ron Rash. Jackson: UP of Mississippi.
  • Eble, Kenneth E. 1985. “The Great Gatsby and the Great American Novel.” In Bruccoli 1985, 79-100.
  • Eble, Kenneth E, ed. 1973. F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Collection of Criticism. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • Eliot, T. S. (1922) 1998. The Waste Land and Other Poems. New York: Signet.
  • Eller, Ronald D. 1982. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P.
  • Euripides. (ca. 431 BCE) 1929. Medea. Translated by A. S. Ways. In Landis 1929, 143-208.
  • Fitzgerald, F. Scott. (1925) 2000. The Great Gatsby. London: Penguin.
  • Fromm, Erich. 1947. Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.
  • Griffiths, Matthew. 2017. The New Poetics of Climate Change: Modernist Aesthetics for a Warming World. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Harrison, Robert Pogue. 1992. Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
  • Hart, Jeffrey. 2012. The Living Moment: Modernism in a Broken World. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP.
  • Hayes, Kevin J. 2017. Herman Melville. London: Reaktion.
  • Hoare, Philip. 2019. “Queer, Subversive, Terrifying: Moby-Dick Is the Novel for Now.” Guardian, G2, July 7, 6-7.
  • Hooks, bell. 2009. Belonging: A Culture of Place. London and New York: Routledge.
  • Huggan, Graham. 2018. Colonialism, Culture, Whales: The Cetacean Quartet. London: Bloomsbury.
  • Johannsen, Kristin, Bobbie Ann Mason and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, eds. 2005. Missing Mountains: We Went to the Mountaintop but It Wasn’t There. Nicholasville, KY: Wind.
  • Kephart, Horace. (1914). 2016. Our Southern Highlanders. Skowhegan, ME: Kellscraft Studio.
  • Landis, Paul, ed. 1929. Four Famous Greek Plays: Agamemnon, Oedipus Rex, Medea, The Frogs. New York: Modern Library.
  • Lang, John. 2014. Understanding Ron Rash. Columbia: U of South Carolina P.
  • Lawrence, D. H. (1923) 1971. Studies in Classic American Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  • Lee, Joshua. 2013. “The Pembertons and Corporate Greed: An Ecocritical Look at Ron Rash’s Serena.” James Dickey Review 29 (2): 44-60.
  • Levin, Harry. 1961. Christopher Marlowe: The Overreacher. London: Faber.
  • Lewis, Helen Matthews. 1978. “Introduction: The Colony of Appalachia.” In Lewis, Johnson and Askins 1978, 1-5.
  • Lewis, Helen Mathews, Linda Johnson and Donald Askins, eds. 1978. Colonialism in Modern America: The Appalachian Case. Boone, NC: Appalachian Consortium P.
  • Maguire, Laurie and Aleksandra Thostrup. 2013. “Marlowe and Character.” In Bartels and Smith 2013, 39-48.
  • Mangum, Bryant. 1998. “The Great Gatsby.” In Schellinger 1998, 514-15.
  • Marlowe, Christopher. (1590) 1976a. Tamburlaine. In Pendry and Maxwell 1976, 3-121.
  • Marlowe, Christopher. (1593) 1976b. The Massacre at Paris. In Pendry and Maxwell 1976, 235-70.
  • Marlowe, Christopher. (1604) 1965. Doctor Faustus. Edited by John D. Jump. London: Routledge.
  • McIntire, Gabrielle. 2015a. “The Wasteland as Ecocritique.” In McIntire 2015b.
  • McIntire, Gabrielle, ed. 2015b. The Cambridge Companion to the Wasteland. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. Kindle edition.
  • McSweeney, Kerry. 1986. Moby-Dick: Ishmael’s Mighty Book. New York: Twayne.
  • Melville, Herman. (1851) 1972. Moby-Dick. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
  • Morrow, Christopher. 2013. “Acknowledgement, Adaptation and Shakespeare in Ron Rash’s Serena.” South Central Review 30 (2): 136-61.
  • Murshed, Syed Mansoob. 2018. The Resource Curse. Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda.
  • O’Connor, Flannery. (1953) 1955a. “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. In O’Connor 1955b, 9-29.
  • O’Connor, Flannery. 1955b. A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. New York: Harcourt Brace.
  • Parini, Jay. 2009. Review of Serena, by Ron Rash. Guardian, October 10. [Accessed online on August 29, 2018].
  • Pendry, E. D. and J. C. Maxwell, eds. 1976. Christopher Marlowe: Complete Plays and Poems. London: J. M. Dent.
  • Pinderhughes, Charles. 2011. “Toward a New Theory of Internal Colonialism.” Socialism and Democracy 25 (1): 235-56.
  • Rash, Ron. 2008a. Serena. New York: HarperCollins.
  • Rash, Ron. 2008b. “An Interview with Ron Rash.” By Jesse Graves and Randall Wilhelm. In Rash 2008a, 1-13.
  • Rash, Ron. (2008) 2010. Serena. Edinburgh: Canongate.
  • Rash, Ron. 2010. “My January Interview with Ron Rash.” By Stephen M. Fox. Asfoxseesit (blog), September 10. [Accessed online on December 26, 2019].
  • Rash, Ron. (2003) 2017a. “The Power of Blood-Memory: A Conversation.” Interview by Joyce Compton Brown. In Claxton and Newcomb 2017, 26-44.
  • Rash, Ron. (2006) 2017b. “The Natural World is the Most Universal of Languages.” Interview by Thomas Bjerre. In Claxton and Newcomb 2017, 70-81.
  • Rash, Ron. (2012) 2017c. “Ron Rash: Shaped by the Land, Torn Apart by Intolerance.” Interview by Robert Birnbaum. In Claxton and Newcomb 2017, 146-64.
  • Rash, Ron. (2014) 2017d. “An Interview with Ron Rash.” Interview by Frédérique Spill. In Claxton and Newcomb 2017, 178-89.
  • Reece, Erik. 2005. “Looking for Hope in Appalachia.” In Johannsen, Mason and Taylor-Hall 2005, 182-87.
  • Said, Edward. 1993. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage.
  • Schellinger, Paul, ed. 1998. Encyclopedia of the Novel. London: Fitzroy Dearborn.
  • Shakespeare, William. (ca. 1606) 1997. Macbeth. Edited by A. R. Braunmuller. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
  • Shoemaker, Jack, ed. 2019a. Wendell Berry: Essays 1969-1990. New York: Library of America.
  • Shoemaker, Jack, ed. 2019b. Wendell Berry: Essays 1993-2017. New York: Library of America.
  • Stephens, Brenda D. 2010. “Divergent Worldviews in Ron Rash’s Serena.” Master’s thesis, Gardner-Webb University.
  • Thoreau, Henry David. (1854) 1974. Walden. London: J. M. Dent.
  • Walls, David S. 1978. “Internal Colony or Internal Periphery? A Critique of Current Models and an Alternative Formulation.” In Lewis, Johnson and Askins 1978, 319-49.
  • Weller, Jack E. 1965. Yesterday’s People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington: UP of Kentucky.
  • Welty, Eudora. (1956) 1987a. “Place in Fiction.” In Welty 1987b, 116-33.
  • Welty, Eudora. 1987b. The Eye of the Story: Selected Essays and Reviews. London: Virago.
  • Wilhelm, Randall and Zachary Vernon, eds. 2018. Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash. Columbia: U of South Carolina P.
  • Wolfe, Thomas. (1941) 2000. The Hills Beyond. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP.
  • Worton, Michael and Judith Still. 1990a. “Introduction.” In Worton and Still 1990b, 1-44.
  • Worton, Michael and Judith Still, eds. 1990b. Intertextuality: Theories and Practices. Manchester: Manchester UP.
Fonte de datos: Dialnet