My father's daughterDeborah Milton's biography of silence
- Sánchez-Palencia Carazo, Carolina 1
- Almagro, Manuel 1
-
1
Universidad de Sevilla
info
ISSN: 1576-6357
Année de publication: 2000
Titre de la publication: New Voices in Literature
Número: 2
Pages: 113-124
Type: Article
D'autres publications dans: Journal of English Studies
Résumé
In The Tree of Knowledge (1990) Eva Figes re-creates the life of John Milton's daughter, Deborah, who, due to the poet's blindness, became the actual "hand" of the author. At the end of her life she gives us an alternative vision of the poet both as father and writer in a narrative which, as opposed to the centrality of Milton's narratives, concentrates upon the marginal aspects of everyday life. Thus, in Figes's novel the "grand narrative" constituted by Milton and his work is displaced by Deborah's "petite histoire", which paradigmatically exemplifies the role women have been assigned in History. That displacement of one narrative by another is in itself an occasion to re-consider the validity and the culturality of our notions of historical relevance.
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