Academic literature on the topic 'Beloved (Morrison, Toni)'

This thesis investigates Toni Morrison's engagement with tragedy in her novel Beloved. In opposition to late twentieth-century interpretations of Beloved, which see this novel as reordering or revisiting history in order to establish in its characters a sense of self-worth, this thesis understands Beloved as the narrative which calls a halt to the search for a worthy sense of self in a prescribed history. It argues that the form of this novel is designed and arranged in order to present in dramatic time a conception of a consciousness recognisable as already and always existing in African American individuals: that is, before, during and after slavery. This thesis contends that an engagement with tragedy is crucial in the achievement of this end. In an engagement with Morrison's Nobel Lecture (1993), Chapter One argues that the significations of cultural authority are the result of a process in which negotiations of difference take place (Bhabha 2005). In a study of Morrison's engagement with Du Bois's (1897) theory of double consciousness, Chapter Two researches the complex nature of true fulfilment for the marginalized. Du Bois's difficulty in establishing a simple claim to equality is contrasted with Morrison's rejection of the discourses of difference, exclusion and marginalization (Morrison 1993). Chapter Three develops this line of enquiry to include Morrison's adaption of ancient, tragic drama to the demands of African American writing. Morrison's innovatory use of the separate and external configuration of human sensibilities in the form of Beloved is carefully considered in this chapter. Chapter Four engages with theories concerning the imposition of difference and the material conditions of appropriation, and the signifying system it spawns (Guillaumin 1995). It discusses Morrison's aesthetic engagement with the master/slave relationship.

The larger issue of the relationship between theory, fiction and experience provides the backdrop for a study of constructions of home in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Beloved. Feminist standpoint theory contends that knowledge is socially and historically constructed. Using the home as a category of analysis, I show how Morrison's constructions of home are located within specific socio-economic, racial, and political contexts which mold the novels' characters. Both feminist standpoint theory and the novels develop a notion of "positionality"--one's location within a larger social and historical network. Differences in focus do exist, however, which stem from their respective developmental and experiential contexts--one being primarily theoretical and scholarly, and the other being the complex literary and fictional mediation of a political experience. Unlike the theoretical articulation of concepts of the standpoint, fiction offers a complex perspective that may, in turn, be used to inform discussions of political and epistemological concepts.

The text of Beloved will be analyzed with a Kleinian and Freudian approach in order to show how the characters see each other as good or bad objects. This essay begins with an explanation of terms and a short presentation of psychoanalysis and object relations theory. Thereafter, each main character and their relation to Beloved will be examined and discussed as well as their relation to each other.

<p>The intention with this essay is to examine the symbolic meaning of trees in Toni Morrison’s <em>Beloved</em>. Trees are repeatedly mentioned throughout the novel and in this essay the trees are claimed to carry various meanings. A main usage of tree imagery is argued to be in connection to the life and death struggles of the main characters. The relation between tree imagery and slavery, and the effects of this relation, is also analysed.</p>

The focal point of this study is the examination of ancestral remembrance and the effects of that presence on the epic fulfillmeht of the female heroic characters in two of Toni Morrison’s novels Beloved and Sula. As a comparative study, this dissertation concerns itself with identifying the common cultural assumptions, values and traditions attributed to the African world and the African Americans illustrated in two of Morrison’s novels. To this end, the ontological principles that unify African world culture and the accompanying cosmological categories delineate the discussion of motifs, images, and archetypes employed by Morrison to invoke the ancestral presence. Moreover, this study explores the use of ritual defined by deliberate rhetoric that frames apocalyptic ideas and advances epic achievement.

This essay is a close-reading study of Toni Morrison's novel Beloved. The purpose of this essay is to investigate and describe Gérard Genette's narratological theories and their function in the novel when looking at how the story is told. The questions that are being answered are how flashbacks actually affect the chronological order of events and who the narrator is that’s telling the story. The methods that are being used in the report are a close-reading of Beloved and making a selection of previous research. The selected research will show an overview of some examples of areas and theories that has been used in other essays. In the summary it appears from the result of the analysis that flashbacks functions as explanations of the characters' thoughts or actions in the present and that the narrator most of the time is the character that is in a particular situation.