From the Personal to the Collective: A Trans-textual Reading of the Autobiographical in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”

Document Type : Original research articles

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Damietta University

Abstract

This research is intended to introduce a trans-textual reading of Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and her poem “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in an attempt to prove that Angelou passed from the personal in I know to the collective in “Caged bird” through analyzing both works in the light of intertextuality, paratextuality, metatextuality and architextuality as different categories of transtextuality. Analyzed and linked together, both works prove typical for an intratextual reading that is held to support the main proposition held in the research. What Angelou delineated as personal and individual in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is metaphorically and poetically expressed with brevity in “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” to address the collective and the university. Both works bring a plethora of themes that are brought powerfully into the texts through some stylistic devices and techniques, and held intact together through the form and structure of each work. The autobiographical form of the novel is tackled as an aiding tool that tells and supports much of the themes analyzed and discussed in the research making sense of the proposed departure from the personal to the collective in both works.

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