Parody and Paradox: Patricia Eakins’s Recreation of the Slave Narrative in the Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste

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Patrica Eakins’s humorous pastiche of the slave narrative pays tribute to the most vital qualities of the original texts while revitalizing their fictional possibilities by allying them with the strategies of postmodern fiction. Her seemingly whimsical story of an Eighteenth-century slave from the Caribbean relies for its functioning not only on meticulous research into the reality of the world of the slaves but on her understanding of the basic paradox which underlies all of the slave narratives and their fictional avatars: Pierre can only weave the tale of his singular misfortune from the threads that make up the fabric of his masters’ narratives. This is the essential paradox that novelists like Caryl Phillips have used as the foundation of their fictional treatments of the slave trade. Eakins breathes fresh life into this conundrum by showing that the roots of Pierre Baptiste’s freedom are inextricably entwined with the fetters, whether physical, cultural, linguistic, philosophical or historical which have bound him in slavery. The novel mobilizes the self-reflexivity of the postmodern novel to transform its many fictional devices into mirrors of the central paradox which lies at its core.