Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)

STUDIES - László Dányi: Nat Turner: History that Fiction Makes, or Fiction that History Makes?

perspective, confining to the dustbin of the African

—American past the belief born out of centuries of oppression that what was white was good and what was black was inferior".

1

6 More recent criticism of Styron's Nat Turner has become more subtle. Robert N. Fossum regards it as being "a 'kind of religious allegor/ in which 'Old Testament savagery and rage' are converted at the last into 'New Testament grace and redemption'."

1

7 Marc L. Ratner analyzes the violent opposition of Nat Turner to society which is inhabited with representative characters.

1

8 Shaun O'Connell admits that the novel should be as disturbing to white liberals as to black militants because Nat Turner did what he had to.

1

9 John Thomson writes the following about the validity of the novel: "all we know for certain, considering now the truths of art rather than the blessings of politics or religion, is that from time to time men will rise and slay, if not the oppressor, then whosoever lies at hand in the oppressor's likeness."

2

0 A few years after the publication of Ten Black Writers Respond, Mike Thelwell, one of the ten black writers, still insisted on the existence of a specific black consciousness into which Styron's Turner does not fit

2

1 He attacks the novel for its racism and the implication of Nat Turner's homosexuality. He questions Styron's eligibility to write in the name of a black hero. After considering some of the interpretations of Nat Turner as a fictional character, let me present some of the historical views on him. What have American historians written about Nat Turner and his slave companions? Herbert Aptheker, whom Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. defines as "a faithful Stalinist" who "was an old hand at the manipulation of history,"

22 analyzes the transformations of Nat Turner as a historical figure in his book, 1

6 Harvard Sitkoff, The Struggle for Black Equality (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993) 202. 17 Robert H. Fossum, William Styron, a Critical Essay (Claremont, Calif.: William B. Eerdmans, 1968) 44. 1

8 Marc L. Ratner, William Styron (New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1972) 124. 1

9 Arthur D. Casciato, 161. 2

0 Ibid., 172. 2

1 Ibid., 190. 2

2 Schlesinger, 60. 37