Charles Chesnutt, Rhetorical Passing, and the Flesh-and-Blood Author: A Case for Considering Authorial Intention

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article makes a case for considering not just the implied author (IA) but the flesh-and-blood one in our interpretations, despite the anti-intentionalist assumptions that guide our discipline. Specifically, it argues against the view that we can find out about the IA only through consulting the text: instead, we must sometimes also look to the flesh-and-blood author to construct the IA. To make my case, I focus on the story “The Goophered Grapevine,” by Charles Chesnutt, a Black American author writing in the post-Reconstruction period. My examination of his story draws on the body of narrative theory concerned with unreliable narration, entering into a debate on the location of unreliability: does it reside with the historical reader or is it inherent in the text? An analysis of “The Goophered Grapevine” reveals the existence of two audiences, a discerning and gullible one, who come to very different conclusions about the narrator’s reliability; it also reveals problems with each side of the debate. The analysis shows how important it is to consider Chesnutt’s intentions in forming our interpretations of his story—and by extension the intentions of other minoritized authors. Because literary scholars rely on close reading, the texts we scrutinize offer a myriad of interpretive possibilities. We need at times to use the intentions and beliefs of flesh-and-blood authors, particularly minoritized authors, as a source of inspiration for certain interpretations and an ethical check on others.