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Making History The Biographical Narratives of Robert Penn Warren Jonathan S. Cullick A newly detected correlation between Warrens use of the past and his narrative techniques From his first published book to his final works, Robert Penn Warren wrote novels, poetry, biographies, and essays based on the lives of American historical figuresJohn Brown, Jefferson Davis, Daniel Boone, Huey Long, Thomas Jefferson, Chief Joseph, John James Audubon, Jereboam Beauchamp, and his own father, Robert Franklin Warren, among others. Even some of his critical works take a biographical approach to their subjects, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Theodore Dreiser. In Making History, the first comprehensive survey of Warrens biographical narratives, Jonathan S. Cullick tracks a clear development toward autobiography in Warrens career. He then applies narrative theory to that provocative trend and makes an intriguing discovery: Warrens discourse techniques dramatize his philosophy of history and ethics. Cullick unearths what might be called the narrative syntax of Warrens historical vision. Warrens rejection of the conventional time-line view of history in favor of a matrix paradigm that locates all people and time in a web of interconnected action and responsibility is borne out, Cullick demonstrates, in the predominance of biography, especially autobiography, in his canon. For Warren, understanding history requires connecting with the people who lived it, and those two genres, through major shifts in narrative voice and point of view, not only personalize history but restore the narrators identity in context to the past. Autobiographyin which the narrator inserts himself into the narrative, giving up his neutral or detached stancerepresents the ultimate connection with the historical object of study and, for Warren, becomes the modern alternative to conventional historical discourse. Genre becomes vital in the attempt to reconcile American past and present. Making History considers all of Warrens major biographical narratives and their evolvement from detached reporting to doubtful self-examination. It offers a new reading of Warrens famed novel All the Kings Men and close examination of several neglected texts, including Warrens first book, John Brown: The Making of a Martyr; his essay The World of Daniel Boone; and two of his final works, Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back and Portrait of a Father, both impressionistic collages of genreshistory, biography, meditation, portrait, speculation, and autobiography. Jonathan S. Cullick, PH.D. is Assistant Professor; Director of the Writing Instruction Program, Department of Literature and Language, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky. For more about Jonathan S. Cullick, PH. D. click here.", |