What is it about?
I look at the initial reviews of Go Set a Watchman, identifying a group of critics who suspect that novel had actually been written after To Kill a Mockingbird and who see it as a sequel and a second group who present evidence to provide that it had been written earlier. I go on to suggest that a strictly chronological approach (with GSAW coming before TKAM) isn't as helpful as a spatial approach (with the text of GSAW lying underneath the text of TKAM).
Featured Image
Why is it important?
I validate that relatively few critical studies To Kill a Mockingbird that emerged between the 1980s and 2015 (before the publication of Go Set a Watchman) that challenge the novel's surface argument for empathy and against racism by exploring Atticus' racial and class biases.
Perspectives
We need to revisit all texts, especially the ones that we most cherish, in order to find more complicated ways to understand those works.
Dr James B. Kelley
Mississippi State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Reading TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and GO SET A WATCHMAN as Palimpsest, The Explicator, October 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00144940.2016.1238809.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
