As the first African American woman winner of the Nobel Prize for literature,Toni Morrison is the most outstanding African-American woman author of the 20th century and the brightest star in contemporary African-Ameri...As the first African American woman winner of the Nobel Prize for literature,Toni Morrison is the most outstanding African-American woman author of the 20th century and the brightest star in contemporary African-American literary arena.Toni Morrison is a voluminous writer and she has published nine novels up to the present.Since 1980,her works have been getting more and more widespread attention from literary critics of the world since 1980s.The topic of postcolonialism has been the one of the focuses of Morrison' s novels.This paper is a literature review of Toni Morrison and postcolonialism in her works including the following points:a brief introduction to Morrison and her works,the research on Morrison,the post colonial theory and postcolonialism in Morrison' s works.展开更多
Toni Morrison's masterpiece Beloved is the first of a trilogy aimed at reconstructing African American history of more than 300 years. This essay explores Morrison's emphasis on love, focusing primarily on the...Toni Morrison's masterpiece Beloved is the first of a trilogy aimed at reconstructing African American history of more than 300 years. This essay explores Morrison's emphasis on love, focusing primarily on the personal relationships between Sethe, Beloved, Paul D and Denver. The various forms of love are vividly depicted in a thought-provoking way which weaving through the entire book.展开更多
This paper reinterprets Toni Morrison＇s short story Recitatif, from the perspective of frame theory in cognitive linguistics. It proposes that readers should modify their default values by activating the old and upco...This paper reinterprets Toni Morrison＇s short story Recitatif, from the perspective of frame theory in cognitive linguistics. It proposes that readers should modify their default values by activating the old and upcoming new information pieces so as to re-match the intended cognitive framing of the writer. It finally concludes that the real theme of the novel is not the strengthening of race codes but the discoloring of the White and the Black.展开更多
When people create artistic works,the creating forms never separate with moral judgment. Therefore,it is significant to study literary works from perspective of ethics. The essay tries to discuss the ethic problems or...When people create artistic works,the creating forms never separate with moral judgment. Therefore,it is significant to study literary works from perspective of ethics. The essay tries to discuss the ethic problems or ethic metamorphosis of the characters in Beloved and of the entire black people and American whites,and of the relative background of history and society. Morrison involves the problem of ethics in all her novels,and with them she expresses her expectation of the racial fusion and the spiritual cure,and her longing-for of building a much brighter world.展开更多
The paper focuses on Toni Morrison＇s latest novel God Help the Child （2015）. By presenting a skillful though somewhat perverse merger of binary oppositions at different levels （racial, social, moral, and psycholog...The paper focuses on Toni Morrison＇s latest novel God Help the Child （2015）. By presenting a skillful though somewhat perverse merger of binary oppositions at different levels （racial, social, moral, and psychological）, the writer makes borderlines of all sorts appear artificial and therefore invalidates them. Thus, childhood merges with adulthood through sexual traumas that live on; touch with no touch as the evil touch of a parent equals an abhorrence of touching the child Other; truth with a lie as it proves as destructive as lying in good faith; passing blackness with blue blackness as the former conceives the latter; and appearances with reality in the ironic title of the book, where it is both the mother and the child that in fact need God＇s help. Thus, as Toni Morrison demonstrates, a thoroughly surreptitious, because natural, process of dissolution of all barriers makes them appear to be arbitrary constructs responsible for the equally arbitrary notion of the Other. Taking an utterly holistic view of the nature of things, Morrison seems to suggest that borderlines are a consequence and a manifestation of a lack of balance, which therefore needs to be redressed through love, mutual understanding, and maturation.展开更多
Beginning with an old story, Toni Morrison uses her unique method to tell us the functions of language and her perspectives of language and literature. From this story, we can understand her writing standpoint and her...Beginning with an old story, Toni Morrison uses her unique method to tell us the functions of language and her perspectives of language and literature. From this story, we can understand her writing standpoint and her determination of making contributions to her nation and people. This paper tries to review her speech given in the Nobel Prize in Literature from four aspects. They are the introduction and comprehension of the story, narrative point of view, discourse and power and feminist criticism.展开更多
Toni Morrison＇s fiction may arguably be characterized as postmodern discourse on memory, history and culture. In her novels, the Nobel laureate frequently returns to the past to search for answers to the questions sh...Toni Morrison＇s fiction may arguably be characterized as postmodern discourse on memory, history and culture. In her novels, the Nobel laureate frequently returns to the past to search for answers to the questions she poses about African American realities in the contemporary United States. In doing so, Morrison often creates alternative histories or, more specifically, a usable past----one that allows her to engage in a literary （re-）construction of the Black historical and cultural material which traditional histories have chosen to ignore or disremember. Therefore, as a present-day writer of African American descent, Morrison attempts to reassemble all the fragmentary historical and cultural accounts available to her as a novelist and narrate them in the form of a convincing story. With regard to the above considerations, this article seeks to discuss some of the mechanisms employed by Morrison for weaving her postmodern, memory-filled narrative on the example of her eighth novel, Love （2003）. In particular, the analysis focuses on the book＇s central figure, Bill Cosey, and his Southern ocean-side resort--both seen against the backdrop of the pre- and post-World War II racist America, followed by the 1960s decade of the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, it is also demonstrated how the author＇s use of split narrative as well as the ＂I＂ narrator-cum-character technique contribute to recounting in retrospect Love＇s main, historicized story---one viewed and judged from a present-time perspective.展开更多
Toni Morrison,the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993,has been hailed as one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century.Her works explore and portray blacks’destiny,history,and spiritual world,...Toni Morrison,the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993,has been hailed as one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century.Her works explore and portray blacks’destiny,history,and spiritual world,emphasizing on gender,race,and culture.Song of Solomon and Beloved,the two novels the thesis has selected to make analysis are crucial to her writing career.Toni Morrison’s great many literary works anatomize the survival and psychological pain of African Americans under the restrain and repression of mainstream culture,trying to find out a solution.展开更多
"We Are the Furrow of His Brow"is the graffiti altered from"Beware of the Furrow of His Brow"or"The Furrow of His Brow"on the hood of an oven in a separated black town Ruby.Young people o..."We Are the Furrow of His Brow"is the graffiti altered from"Beware of the Furrow of His Brow"or"The Furrow of His Brow"on the hood of an oven in a separated black town Ruby.Young people of Ruby change the words because they feel regretted contriving to shoot an assumed guilty woman living in the nearby convent.However,whether the woman Consolata and the other four women at the convent are dead remains mysterious.There are some descriptions of magics in Paradise in which the most magical abilities are Connie's"bat vision"and"stepping in".This paper demonstrates the ways that Morrison manifests magic realism in Paradise including multiple narrative timelines,ambiguous writing,reconstituted marginal figures and naturally blended reality.Primarily in thefour ways Morrison presents how she utilizes magic realism genre to depict the changeable world penetrating through the appearance.展开更多
This article examines the problem of individual and collective attempts at forgetting the traumatic past in Toni Morrison’s sixth novel Jazz(1992).More specifically,it emphasizes by selected examples psychological an...This article examines the problem of individual and collective attempts at forgetting the traumatic past in Toni Morrison’s sixth novel Jazz(1992).More specifically,it emphasizes by selected examples psychological and social aspects of willful amnesia which can lend itself useful in helping traumatized(country)individuals to repress painful remembrances,heal mental wounds and build a new identity in a memory-free modern city.Analyzing Jazz’s narrative featuring Joe and Violet Trace,with a particular focus put on the expectations and experiences connected with their migration to and life in the City,the article explores via Paul Connerton’s ruminations on cultural forgetting in modern times-delineated in his book How Modernity Forgets(2009)-the mechanisms of intentional amnesia used in the process of recovering from personal and social traumas resulting from more recent(migration and urban life)and more time-distant(slavery and racism)ordeals.展开更多
It may be argued that one of the recurring themes in the fiction of Toni Morrison is the problem of emotional suffering. Indeed, a line of her characters endure a series of traumatic past experiences, the consequences...It may be argued that one of the recurring themes in the fiction of Toni Morrison is the problem of emotional suffering. Indeed, a line of her characters endure a series of traumatic past experiences, the consequences of which are strongly echoed in their present lives and often foreshadow their future. Thus, this article discusses some of the characteristic literary-fantastic manifestations of grief and grieving in Morrison＇s novels, seen as internal and external expressions of the protagonists＇ mental pain. First, the text outlines the major grief-generating conditions for Morrison＇s heroes in general, and then it focuses on the various modes in which their feelings of grief and grieving are communicated. Second, the study exposes the characters＇ psychological strife and the influence it exerts both on themselves and their surroundings. Third and last, the paper concludes with an attempt to establish some typical patterns of grief and grieving common to Morrison＇s fictional figures. In order to reflect a variety of grief-stricken individuals populating Morrison＇s world, the analysis examines a group of three female characters. Taken all together, the selected examples serve to exhibit the complexity of the problem in question, as well as to illustrate the different shades of human sorrow.展开更多
This article aims to present Beloved, a ghost-in-the-flesh protagonist of Toni Morrison＇s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved （1987）, as an incarnation of memory of slavery. Interpreted as personal and shared expe...This article aims to present Beloved, a ghost-in-the-flesh protagonist of Toni Morrison＇s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved （1987）, as an incarnation of memory of slavery. Interpreted as personal and shared experience, Beloved will be analyzed on the basis of memory＇s dynamic nature as an active mnemonic agent operating in and between the individual and collective zones. It will be also argued that on the one hand, Beloved embodies memories of past slaved lives of the novel＇s central characters, Sethe and Paul D, while on the other hand she plays the role of an allegoric reminder of all Black slaves who lived and died in bondage on the American continent. Finally, Beloved will be symbolically seen as a historical, cultural and psychological link between contemporary African Americans and their African ancestors of the Middle Passage. The theoretical framework for this study of Morrison＇s most memorable ghost figure will follow from a discussion of memory＇s individual and shared qualities, as well as from the concepts of a collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, and collective memory.展开更多
文摘As the first African American woman winner of the Nobel Prize for literature,Toni Morrison is the most outstanding African-American woman author of the 20th century and the brightest star in contemporary African-American literary arena.Toni Morrison is a voluminous writer and she has published nine novels up to the present.Since 1980,her works have been getting more and more widespread attention from literary critics of the world since 1980s.The topic of postcolonialism has been the one of the focuses of Morrison' s novels.This paper is a literature review of Toni Morrison and postcolonialism in her works including the following points:a brief introduction to Morrison and her works,the research on Morrison,the post colonial theory and postcolonialism in Morrison' s works.
文摘Toni Morrison's masterpiece Beloved is the first of a trilogy aimed at reconstructing African American history of more than 300 years. This essay explores Morrison's emphasis on love, focusing primarily on the personal relationships between Sethe, Beloved, Paul D and Denver. The various forms of love are vividly depicted in a thought-provoking way which weaving through the entire book.
文摘This paper reinterprets Toni Morrison＇s short story Recitatif, from the perspective of frame theory in cognitive linguistics. It proposes that readers should modify their default values by activating the old and upcoming new information pieces so as to re-match the intended cognitive framing of the writer. It finally concludes that the real theme of the novel is not the strengthening of race codes but the discoloring of the White and the Black.
文摘When people create artistic works,the creating forms never separate with moral judgment. Therefore,it is significant to study literary works from perspective of ethics. The essay tries to discuss the ethic problems or ethic metamorphosis of the characters in Beloved and of the entire black people and American whites,and of the relative background of history and society. Morrison involves the problem of ethics in all her novels,and with them she expresses her expectation of the racial fusion and the spiritual cure,and her longing-for of building a much brighter world.
文摘The paper focuses on Toni Morrison＇s latest novel God Help the Child （2015）. By presenting a skillful though somewhat perverse merger of binary oppositions at different levels （racial, social, moral, and psychological）, the writer makes borderlines of all sorts appear artificial and therefore invalidates them. Thus, childhood merges with adulthood through sexual traumas that live on; touch with no touch as the evil touch of a parent equals an abhorrence of touching the child Other; truth with a lie as it proves as destructive as lying in good faith; passing blackness with blue blackness as the former conceives the latter; and appearances with reality in the ironic title of the book, where it is both the mother and the child that in fact need God＇s help. Thus, as Toni Morrison demonstrates, a thoroughly surreptitious, because natural, process of dissolution of all barriers makes them appear to be arbitrary constructs responsible for the equally arbitrary notion of the Other. Taking an utterly holistic view of the nature of things, Morrison seems to suggest that borderlines are a consequence and a manifestation of a lack of balance, which therefore needs to be redressed through love, mutual understanding, and maturation.
文摘Beginning with an old story, Toni Morrison uses her unique method to tell us the functions of language and her perspectives of language and literature. From this story, we can understand her writing standpoint and her determination of making contributions to her nation and people. This paper tries to review her speech given in the Nobel Prize in Literature from four aspects. They are the introduction and comprehension of the story, narrative point of view, discourse and power and feminist criticism.
文摘Toni Morrison＇s fiction may arguably be characterized as postmodern discourse on memory, history and culture. In her novels, the Nobel laureate frequently returns to the past to search for answers to the questions she poses about African American realities in the contemporary United States. In doing so, Morrison often creates alternative histories or, more specifically, a usable past----one that allows her to engage in a literary （re-）construction of the Black historical and cultural material which traditional histories have chosen to ignore or disremember. Therefore, as a present-day writer of African American descent, Morrison attempts to reassemble all the fragmentary historical and cultural accounts available to her as a novelist and narrate them in the form of a convincing story. With regard to the above considerations, this article seeks to discuss some of the mechanisms employed by Morrison for weaving her postmodern, memory-filled narrative on the example of her eighth novel, Love （2003）. In particular, the analysis focuses on the book＇s central figure, Bill Cosey, and his Southern ocean-side resort--both seen against the backdrop of the pre- and post-World War II racist America, followed by the 1960s decade of the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, it is also demonstrated how the author＇s use of split narrative as well as the ＂I＂ narrator-cum-character technique contribute to recounting in retrospect Love＇s main, historicized story---one viewed and judged from a present-time perspective.
文摘Toni Morrison,the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993,has been hailed as one of the greatest American authors of the 20th century.Her works explore and portray blacks’destiny,history,and spiritual world,emphasizing on gender,race,and culture.Song of Solomon and Beloved,the two novels the thesis has selected to make analysis are crucial to her writing career.Toni Morrison’s great many literary works anatomize the survival and psychological pain of African Americans under the restrain and repression of mainstream culture,trying to find out a solution.
文摘"We Are the Furrow of His Brow"is the graffiti altered from"Beware of the Furrow of His Brow"or"The Furrow of His Brow"on the hood of an oven in a separated black town Ruby.Young people of Ruby change the words because they feel regretted contriving to shoot an assumed guilty woman living in the nearby convent.However,whether the woman Consolata and the other four women at the convent are dead remains mysterious.There are some descriptions of magics in Paradise in which the most magical abilities are Connie's"bat vision"and"stepping in".This paper demonstrates the ways that Morrison manifests magic realism in Paradise including multiple narrative timelines,ambiguous writing,reconstituted marginal figures and naturally blended reality.Primarily in thefour ways Morrison presents how she utilizes magic realism genre to depict the changeable world penetrating through the appearance.
文摘This article examines the problem of individual and collective attempts at forgetting the traumatic past in Toni Morrison’s sixth novel Jazz(1992).More specifically,it emphasizes by selected examples psychological and social aspects of willful amnesia which can lend itself useful in helping traumatized(country)individuals to repress painful remembrances,heal mental wounds and build a new identity in a memory-free modern city.Analyzing Jazz’s narrative featuring Joe and Violet Trace,with a particular focus put on the expectations and experiences connected with their migration to and life in the City,the article explores via Paul Connerton’s ruminations on cultural forgetting in modern times-delineated in his book How Modernity Forgets(2009)-the mechanisms of intentional amnesia used in the process of recovering from personal and social traumas resulting from more recent(migration and urban life)and more time-distant(slavery and racism)ordeals.
文摘It may be argued that one of the recurring themes in the fiction of Toni Morrison is the problem of emotional suffering. Indeed, a line of her characters endure a series of traumatic past experiences, the consequences of which are strongly echoed in their present lives and often foreshadow their future. Thus, this article discusses some of the characteristic literary-fantastic manifestations of grief and grieving in Morrison＇s novels, seen as internal and external expressions of the protagonists＇ mental pain. First, the text outlines the major grief-generating conditions for Morrison＇s heroes in general, and then it focuses on the various modes in which their feelings of grief and grieving are communicated. Second, the study exposes the characters＇ psychological strife and the influence it exerts both on themselves and their surroundings. Third and last, the paper concludes with an attempt to establish some typical patterns of grief and grieving common to Morrison＇s fictional figures. In order to reflect a variety of grief-stricken individuals populating Morrison＇s world, the analysis examines a group of three female characters. Taken all together, the selected examples serve to exhibit the complexity of the problem in question, as well as to illustrate the different shades of human sorrow.
文摘This article aims to present Beloved, a ghost-in-the-flesh protagonist of Toni Morrison＇s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved （1987）, as an incarnation of memory of slavery. Interpreted as personal and shared experience, Beloved will be analyzed on the basis of memory＇s dynamic nature as an active mnemonic agent operating in and between the individual and collective zones. It will be also argued that on the one hand, Beloved embodies memories of past slaved lives of the novel＇s central characters, Sethe and Paul D, while on the other hand she plays the role of an allegoric reminder of all Black slaves who lived and died in bondage on the American continent. Finally, Beloved will be symbolically seen as a historical, cultural and psychological link between contemporary African Americans and their African ancestors of the Middle Passage. The theoretical framework for this study of Morrison＇s most memorable ghost figure will follow from a discussion of memory＇s individual and shared qualities, as well as from the concepts of a collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, and collective memory.
