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A Curious Little Footnote": Footnotes as a Narrative Device in Contemporary American Fiction
Sirotenko, Alexandra ; Quinn, Justin (advisor) ; Ulmanová, Hana (referee)
This thesis aims to explore how footnotes, used as a narrative device in contemporary US fiction, help address and challenge the global questions of authority, cultural power and historical narrative of the past. The work begins by outlining the footnotes' history of the use in academic writing and in 20th century fictional texts to examine their complex relationship with the main text and its authority in the past. It then establishes the context of globalization, within which the narrative of American cultural supremacy is the focal point, and maps some cultural shifts in the landscape within the country that were responsible for the changing perception of the historical narrative of the US. The last part examines the two works of fictions that are directly shaped by those cultural shifts - The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz and The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara - and analyzes the use of footnotes in those novels as instruments to destabilize narrative authority. The argument is made that through the use of footnotes these writers reflect on and challenge the historical power narrative of the US and its relationship to Others and othering.

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