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1
Novais, Célia Cândida Valente. "Da América como "home" : identidade e linguagem em Song of Solomon de Toni Morrison." Dissertação, Porto : [Edição do Autor], 2003. http://aleph.letras.up.pt/F?func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000142533.
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A dissertação apresenta um estudo sobre as questões da Identidade e da Linguagem na obra de Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon. Procura-se mostrar de que forma(s) o grupo afro-americano faz uma apropriação muito própria da linguagem escrita que aliada à palavra oral adquire sentidos alternativos, em especial um mundo de multiplicidades como a América. pretende-se, afinal sugerir formas de entender a América como "home" através dessa apropriação da(s) linguagem(ns) e também através da afirmação da identidade afro-americana.
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Novais, Célia Cândida Valente. "Da América como "home" : identidade e linguagem em Song of Solomon de Toni Morrison." Master's thesis, Porto : [Edição do Autor], 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10216/10823.
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A dissertação apresenta um estudo sobre as questões da Identidade e da Linguagem na obra de Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon. Procura-se mostrar de que forma(s) o grupo afro-americano faz uma apropriação muito própria da linguagem escrita que aliada à palavra oral adquire sentidos alternativos, em especial um mundo de multiplicidades como a América. pretende-se, afinal sugerir formas de entender a América como "home" através dessa apropriação da(s) linguagem(ns) e também através da afirmação da identidade afro-americana.
3
Ribeiro, Maria Emília da Silva Quintela. "O legado da ancestralidade : mito, magia e ritual em Song of Solomon de Toni Morrison." Dissertação, Porto : [Edição do Autor], 2010. http://aleph.letras.up.pt/F?func=find-b&find_code=SYS&request=000206239.
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A presente tese procura demonstrar que o interesse de Toni Morrison pela inscrição da cultura aITo-americana na cultura americana branca a leva a escrever o romance Song ofSolomon. Ao tentar revitalizar as características do passado ancestral, a autora interliga os elementos mito, magia e ritual, que serviam de base à construção da identidade dos negros nos primórdios, para demonstrar que a aculturação dos valores dominantes leva os negros, do século XX, a se esquecerem de quem são e de onde provêm. As tensões criadas entre os princípios da cultura africana e a cultura americana conduzem ao desfasamento entre os modos de vida dos afro-americanos. Contudo, apenas os que seguem a tradição africana se sentem realizados a nível pessoal, já que possuem a memória dos feitos das figuras do passado, que lhes foi sendo transmitida de geração em geração. Tendo em consideração que o mito do africano voador constitui uma narrativa verdadeira, sagrada e consagrada como exemplo, só os que mantêm as suas raízes africanas têm a capacidade de "voar" ao encontro da liberdade. Os americanos brancos consideravam que os rituais e a magia dos negros eram obras do diabo, já que o cepticismo em relação a este tipo de religião impõe a descrença de que não existem espíritos com os quais é possível estabelecer contacto. Neste sentido, Morrison constrói duas personagens, que embora sendo irmãos, se comportam de modo muito distinto em relação à vida. Se, por um lado, Pilate apadrinha o estilo de vida dos antepassados, sendo a guardiã da tradição oral, por outro Macon Dead II molda-se ao estilo de vida dos americanos, interessando-lhe o sucesso material. Estas circunstâncias levam à ruptura dos laços familiares entre os dois. Milkman é, então, confrontado com estas duas atitudes, vivendo inicialmente de acordo com o estabelecido pelo pai.(...)
4
Ribeiro, Maria Emília da Silva Quintela. "O legado da ancestralidade : mito, magia e ritual em Song of Solomon de Toni Morrison." Master's thesis, Porto : [Edição do Autor], 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10216/55352.
Full textAbstract:
A presente tese procura demonstrar que o interesse de Toni Morrison pela inscrição da cultura aITo-americana na cultura americana branca a leva a escrever o romance Song ofSolomon. Ao tentar revitalizar as características do passado ancestral, a autora interliga os elementos mito, magia e ritual, que serviam de base à construção da identidade dos negros nos primórdios, para demonstrar que a aculturação dos valores dominantes leva os negros, do século XX, a se esquecerem de quem são e de onde provêm. As tensões criadas entre os princípios da cultura africana e a cultura americana conduzem ao desfasamento entre os modos de vida dos afro-americanos. Contudo, apenas os que seguem a tradição africana se sentem realizados a nível pessoal, já que possuem a memória dos feitos das figuras do passado, que lhes foi sendo transmitida de geração em geração. Tendo em consideração que o mito do africano voador constitui uma narrativa verdadeira, sagrada e consagrada como exemplo, só os que mantêm as suas raízes africanas têm a capacidade de "voar" ao encontro da liberdade. Os americanos brancos consideravam que os rituais e a magia dos negros eram obras do diabo, já que o cepticismo em relação a este tipo de religião impõe a descrença de que não existem espíritos com os quais é possível estabelecer contacto. Neste sentido, Morrison constrói duas personagens, que embora sendo irmãos, se comportam de modo muito distinto em relação à vida. Se, por um lado, Pilate apadrinha o estilo de vida dos antepassados, sendo a guardiã da tradição oral, por outro Macon Dead II molda-se ao estilo de vida dos americanos, interessando-lhe o sucesso material. Estas circunstâncias levam à ruptura dos laços familiares entre os dois. Milkman é, então, confrontado com estas duas atitudes, vivendo inicialmente de acordo com o estabelecido pelo pai.(...)
5
Hudson, Julie Ellen. "Family and national narratives in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved and Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred years of solitude and the autumn of the patriarch /." Digital version accessible at:, 1999. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/main.
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Anderson, Melanie R. "The beloved paradise : spectrality in the novels of Toni Morrison from Song of Solomon through Love /." Full text available from ProQuest UM Digital Dissertations, 2009. http://0-proquest.umi.com.umiss.lib.olemiss.edu/pqdweb?index=0&did=1800249031&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1268164733&clientId=22256.
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Josephson, Sally-Anne. "The relationship between character and setting: A narrative strategy in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1250.
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Ranström, Ingrid. "Black Community in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM), 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-5206.
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Using the novels, The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon, the purpose of this essay is to examine Toni Morrison’s characters in the setting of the black community with emphasis on gender, participation in society and the class differences which exist within the black collective. All of the characters in the narratives exist in communities which are defined by the racial barriers formed by the surrounding white societies. Due to her concern with the inter-relatedness of race, gender and class as they are lived by the individuals, Morrison gives her characters physical and psychological qualities which enhance their chances for survival and fulfillment, thus leading to the survival of the black community. Through her characters in The Bluest Eye, Sula and Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison portrays the black community with reference to blackness and the inner struggles of the individual as well as the class differences and social structures within the collective. It can be concluded that the black community is an important part of today’s society as the contemporary individual must embrace his/her culture and heritage, which is found in the unity of the collective.
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Watson, Khalilah Tyri. "Literature as Prophecy: Toni Morrison as Prophetic Writer." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2009. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/english_diss/50.
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From fourteenth century medieval literature to contemporary American and African American literature, researchers have singled out and analyzed writing from every genre that is prophetic in nature, predicting or warning about events, both revolutionary and dire, to come. One twentieth-century American whose work embodies the essence of warning and foretelling through history-laden literature is Toni Morrison. This modern-day literary prophet reinterprets eras gone by through what she calls “re-memory” in order to guide her readers, and her society, to a greater understanding of the consequences of slavery and racism in America and to prompt both races to escape the pernicious effects of this heritage. Several critics have recognized and written about Morrison’s unique style of prophetic prose. These critics, however, have either taken a general cursory analysis of her complete body of works or they are only focused on one of her texts as a site of evidence. Despite the many critical essays and journal articles that have been written about Morrison as literary prophet, no critic has extensively investigated Morrison’s major works by way of textual analysis under this subject, to discuss Morrison prophetic prose, her motivation for engaging in a form of prophetic writing, and the context of this writing in a wider general, as well as an African-American, tradition. This dissertation takes on a more comprehensive, cross-sectional analysis of her works that has been previously employed, concentrating on five of Morrison’s major novels: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, in an order to assess how Morrison develops and infuses warnings and admonitions of biblical proportions. This investigation seeks to reveal Morrison’s motivation to prophecy to Americans, black and white, the context in which she engages with her historical and contemporary subjects, and the nature of the admonitions to present and future action she offers to what she sees as a contemporary generation of socially and historically oblivious African Americans, using literary prophecy as the tool by which to accomplish her objectives. This dissertation also demonstrates—by way of textual analysis and literary theory—the evolution through five novels of Morrison’s development as a literary prophet.
10
Hinkson, Warren. "Morrison, Bambara, Silko : fractured and reconstructed mythic patterns in Song of Solomon, The salt eaters, and Ceremony." Thesis, Université Laval, 2010. http://www.theses.ulaval.ca/2010/27566/27566.pdf.
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Clark, Cameron C. ""And she was loved" trauma and testimony in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon /." [Gainesville, Fla.] : University of Florida, 2003. http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/UFE0000664.
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Thomas, Joan Potter. "Broken Branches: The Search for Ancestry in Toni Morrison's Novels "Song of Solomon" and "Beloved"." W&M ScholarWorks, 1991. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539625676.
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Kazi-Nance, Ambata K. "Traumatic and Healing Memory in Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2012. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1450.
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A comparative analysis of Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony and Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, with a focus on individual as well as collective memory work in historically marginalized indigenous and African-American communities, respectively. This represents a critical study of how the novels invoke progressive and redemptive models of remembering, as well as foreground the role of spiritual guides in the transformative process from trauma towards healing.
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Persson, Ulrika. "Cultural Trauma and Cultural Identity : A Study of Pilate in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." Thesis, Högskolan i Halmstad, Sektionen för humaniora (HUM), 2014. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-24445.
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This essay is a study of the character Pilate in Toni Morrison’s novel Song of Solomon. It employs a postcolonial theoretical perspective in order to explore the cultural trauma that Pilate experiences in the aftermath of slavery. Furthermore, it analyses the impact of that trauma on the formation of Pilate’s own cultural identity. When defining cultural trauma and cultural identity, the works of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha and Frantz Fanon are used. In this discussion, terms such as "double consciousness", "unhomeliness" and the "Other" are employed as a theoretical background to the analysis. Pilate’s trauma consists of being an orphan. Moreover, she is rejected as "Other" both by her brother as well as by each society that she settles into. Although suffering from this trauma and being all alone in the world, Pilate manages to both affirm her cultural heritage as well as to use it in a positive way when dealing with the trauma and creating her own cultural identity. In her case, she is able to stay close to her roots and to avoid the feeling of double-consciousness and unhomeliness. Instead she has a solid foundation in her ancestral past and the cultural identity it represents.
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Jensen, Karen. "Toni Morrison’s Depiction of Beauty Standards in Relation to Class, Politics of Respectability, and Consumerism in Song of Solomon." ScholarWorks@UNO, 2013. http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1743.
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In Song of Solomon, published during a transitional moment in the history of U.S. feminism, Toni Morrison portrays the destructive forces of hegemonic female beauty standards, materialism, and consumerism in a Midwestern African-American community from the 1930s to the 1960s. She reveals a hierarchy in which men define standards of beauty and respectability that enforce white bourgeois ideals. Focusing on five female characters, this thesis examines this hierarchy; the agents who maintain it; and the ways in which it affects female characters who accept and/or reject it. While one of the characters, Hagar, perishes in her attempt to live up to normative beauty standards, her cousin Corinthians is liberated when she leaves her oppressive father and moves in with a working class male partner. Morrison thus creates a viable alternative to strict adherence to materialist values, while representing the destructive force of oppressive beauty norms and standards of respectability.
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Schetina, Catherine Ruth. "“It Made the Ladies into Ghosts”: The Male Hero's Journey and the Destruction of the Feminine in William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/405.
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This thesis is a consideration of the intertextual relationship between William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. It considers the objectification and destruction of women and female-coded men in the service of the male protagonist's journey to selfhood, with particular focus on the construction of race, gender, and class performances.
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Lynton, Jordan. "An intersectional comparison of female agency in Toni Morrison's Sula and Wang Anyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2013. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/873.
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The opportunities created by the end of the Mao Era and legislature promoting the rights of African Americans and women in the mid-twentieth century allowed women of both cultures to break further into the literary scene and negotiate their own sense of agency through their work. Although Western feminism also grew rapidly throughout this period, its ethnocentric centering of gender prevented it from being a reliable lens with which to analyze the work of Chinese and African American women who experienced issues of race, class, and gender simultaneously. This caused Western feminists to evaluate the work of Chinese and African American women from a perspective of privilege and misrepresented the cultural, social, and political influences that impacted their agency. Thus, this paper seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the intersectional paradigm as a comparative lens with which to analyze the construction of female characters in mid-twentieth century Chinese and African American fiction in place of a Western feminist lens. To this effect, it will apply the intersectional lens to Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) and Wang Anyi's Song of Everlasting Sorrow (2008) specifically, to determine how this research paradigm can be used to reveal the identities the female protagonists construct and their opportunities for agency. This paper hopes to increase discourse on the applications of intersectionality in literature as a tool for better understanding the literature of women of color.B.A.
Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
English
18
Ming-Yi, Lee, and 李銘宜. "The Re-presentation of Black Women in Toni Morrison*s Song of Solomon." Thesis, 1999. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/40207551533066421260.
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碩士國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
87
Abstract Being a black woman and a famous writer, Toni Morrison decisively asserts that she writes for black women. Due to black women*s double marginality, people do not really understand black women. As a result, people judge black women through the misunderstanding so that the image of black women is not authentic. They are described as dirty, ignorant and superstitious group because of their absence from school and dark skin. Obviously, the significant role that black women play is invisible to the public. Thus, the re-presentation of black women becomes Morrison*s main concern in her writing. In other words, Morrison tires to make "present" and "visible" the true image of black women that is absent in literature and history. In Song of Solomon, by re-presenting those black women who contribute to the hero*s growth, Morrison introduces black women as a capable and important group in the black community. Like most traditional black women, the female characters in her novels are most marginalized ones and neglected in the black community. Without money, they cannot receive formal education. What they can do in their daily life is the housework, singing and story-telling. Such a simple and easy life, however, breeds them a free mind. They can live their unique life and ignore the morality preached in school. While they regard singing and story-telling as the important activities in life, they consequently preserve the valuable oral tradition in the black culture. These women eventually become the best teachers for the protagonist, a man who is ignorant of his own roots. Aside from the preservation of the black culture and their guidance to the hero, these black women are also the protectors of the repressed history. Apparently, through their contribution to the individuals, to the black community, to history, Morrison makes black women*s invisible yet important role present. Meanwhile, black women*s significant status also powerfully revises the misconception, the ruined image imposed on themselves in Song of Solomon. This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter is a review of black women*s negative image in literature and history. Also, it provides Toni Morrison*s attitude toward people*s misconception of black women, and how she justifies black women*s distorted image in Song of Solomon. Chapter two collates Morrison*s defense for black women from her essays and interviews. Chapter three reveals the significant roles that black women always do in their daily life through certain female characters in Song of Solomon. Meanwhile, it explains the intimate relationship between black people and the black legacy. Chapter four further explores the important influence of the black legacy upon black females through some black women*s encounters. Chapter five concludes the thesis with an examination of Morrison*s revision of Western literary tradition in Song of Solomon.
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Chou, Wei, and 周薇. "Genealogy, Narrative, and the Politics of Naming in Toni Morrison''''s Song of Solomon." Thesis, 2003. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/77265225178970398711.
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碩士國立中山大學
外國語文學系研究所
91
Abstract Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon deals with the African Americans’ history of fighting for self-independence, while exposing their difficulties in forming a viable cultural identity. Focusing on the politics of naming, the motif of flight, and the constitution of African American manhood, Toni Morrison in this novel aims to provide a different reading/writing of African American history whereupon her people can develop an alternative strategy of identification politics. In this thesis, I problematize the notion of democracy—the ordained rights of human beings to pursuit liberty, happiness and prosperity—by articulating the idea of the American Dream with African Americans’ experiences of self-realization in a so-called democratic society. The purpose is to discuss whether or not African Americans can reverse and utilize their marginalized position as a critical stance for self-articulation to undo the racists’ misnaming on African American people. With a special emphasis on Milkman’s improvisation of the meanings of his family name, Dead, I discuss how the African Americans’ distinctive way of double-talk can facilitate them to negotiate the apparent dualism to inscribe their hybridized identity and how this kind of creativity can help them produce an alternative narrative of their traumatizing as well as truncated history. Also, I intend to analyze both the limitation and liability of conventional psychoanalytic paradigm which is blind to the specificity of African American manhood and the problems peculiar to African American family. Though it is an undeniable historical fact that the African Americans do suffer from the aftermath of plantation slavery, they should be able to empower themselves by re-imagining a collective ancestry as a strategy to formulate an applicable identification politics. While narrating an inspiring genealogy for her people, Toni Morrison wraps up this novel with an open ending. This arrangement suggests to her people that the significations of their cultural identities be opened to further contestation and re-definition.
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Yu-fen, Tseng, and 曾于芬. "The Quest for Black Folklore as Structure in Toni Morrison''s Song of Solomon." Thesis, 2000. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/57754868429149884366.
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碩士國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
88
Among the most highly regarded and widely read fiction writers in the history of American literature, Toni Morrison has completed her illuminating scholarly achievement by articulating the black American experience in her writings. Morrison disagrees with the idea that her race should be relegated to the margins of the literary discourse. Throughout her fiction, she endeavors to display the nuances of African American culture and to reclaim black historical experience. Song of Solomon, Morrison''s third novel, principally focuses on a black male protagonist, who undertakes an archetypal search for self and for transcendence. To be true, Song of Solomon can be regarded as a triumphant endorsement of knowing and regaining ancestral heritage. It is precisely a tale of African-American genealogical archaeology. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The first chapter serves to introduce the purpose and focus of the study. Chapter Two mainly probes the correspondence between the traditional quest motif and that of Song of Solomon. Replete with the quest theme, Song of Solomon aims to achieve a complete self for its hero Milkman. Since Morrison employs the mythic patterns of questing, the quest motif recalls classical mythology. Indeed, Morrison draws on parts of western mythology to depict a “black” odyssey par excellence. It is not surprising that the novel generally follows events and rites of passage common to mythic heroes. However, although Milkman bears similarity to the classical heroes, he is assigned to an even more important role to regain his African heritage than merely to intimate classical, heroic deeds. Even though western mythological patterns are incorporated in the novel, the author avoids constructing her work solely in the foundation of literary allusions. Instead, she is enthusiastic about creating a black novel whose framework and texture emerge more from her African heritage than from the white-centered western culture. As a result, Morrison''s writings not only draw attention to the aesthetic values of Afro-American presence in literature but also echo an awareness of reclaiming the significance of African American culture, which has been unfavorably silenced in the construction of American literary history. The most conspicuous tale reflecting the African-American folk tradition is the canonical tale of the Flying Africans, which is also the kernel of Chapter Three. Coming from the tradition of the African diaspora, the legend of the Flying Africans functions as a reaction against slavery in the New World. Like the Flying Africans, Solomon has the flying ability to embrace his own freedom. Though the heroic side of Solomon''s flight in part contributes to Milkman''s transformation into a whole man, the tragic side of the Solomon''s story should be equally treated as part of the cherished heritage Milkman is supposed to inherit. In the story of Solomon, his wife and the twenty-one children are excluded from such a mythic privilege--a transcendental act which is not only androcentric but also individualistic. Chapter Four explores the plight imposed on those who are left behind by the flying heroes. Hagar''s death and Ryna''s madness are meant to expose the phallocentric myth’s failure to inscribe the transcendent possibilities for female blacks. Milkman has to know the sufferings imposed on them when the flying hero made up his mind to fly away, and should come to the realization that he deeply hurt Hagar. In addition, Hagar is the victim of the white standard of beauty. Hagar''s downfall brings to light that the influence of western ideology has pervasively and immensely undermined the subjectivity of female blacks. In a word, Song of Solomon is by all means a tour de force Morrison has established as a distinct mark of her literary achievement. She successfully brings the African-American cultural context into focus. Delineating the black male protagonist in search of his own identity, Morrison explores the possibilities of reclaiming both the black cultural and communal heritage. The unraveling of his lost genealogy will help Milkman to be initiated from ignorance to spiritual autonomy. Therefore, the legacy Milkman is supposed to inherit in the journey back to his ancestral roots is the reintegration of the fragmented information on which the original version of Solomon''s tale is based. Equally important, Morrison rewrites the legend of the Flying Africans in a way to help both black males and females be equally taken as the subjects in the black cultural context. Her efforts to draw attention to the marginalized female blacks who are left behind by the flying heroes create a more human legend from the black folklore.
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Hoskins, Kimberly Virginia. "The role of the ancestor in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." 1993. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/29349035.html.
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Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1993.Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 74-76).
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Murrell, Sherietta Farron. "Cyclical time and the pleasure principle in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and beloved." 2006. http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga%5Fetd/murrell%5Fsherietta%5Ff%5F200605%5Fma.
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Huang, Ching-fen, and 黃沁芬. "Shame, Trauma and Healing in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Thesis, 2012. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/67534289013895134118.
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博士國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
100
This dissertation aims at investigating how inter-racial and intra-racial shame traumatizes the souls of African-Americans in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. Through family and society, racist discourses and racial violence leave toxic shame in the depth of black people’s heart. The internalized toxic shame not only destroys its victims’ psychological structures but also harms their human relationships. They are tormented by post-traumatic symptoms and shame-induced affects. They also suffer fragmentation of selfhood. Due to toxic shame, they cannot accept and love themselves as who they are. Their self-contempt and self-loathing are so unbearable that they create a variety of cover-ups to fend them off. Furthermore, since their true selves are sent into hiding, the victims suffer from an unauthentic existence as well as broken relationships. Since traumatizing social norms are the focus of my study, I apply Foucault’s theories concerning normations to analyze how racist discourses and norms operate through family and society to dominate blacks in American society. Moreover, I turn to various psychological theories to study how internalized toxic shame traumatizes African-Americans and to find out how healing may occur. Surprisingly, in the two novels mentioned above, Morrison proposes the same notions about shame, trauma and healing as those psychologists do. For Morrison, once the racist discourses or racial violence are internalized, they become toxic and brings demonic destructions to one’s selfhood as well as to one’s relationships. However, just as some psychologists’ belief, Morrison also proposes that love is the antidote for toxic shame. In her novels, Morrison reveals that only unconditional love can heal people of their traumatic shame and can integrate their traumatized and fragmented selfhood. Besides, through compassion and supportive actions, their dissociated relationships can be reconstructed. The Breedloves and the Deads are the two major families under investigations in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon, respectively. Although they are on the two polars of social hierarchy, both black families suffer from internalized racial shame. Members from both families lose contact with their own true self, and they suffer from breached relationships with their family, friends and community. In The Bluest Eye, Pecola, the main character, has never experienced any healing in her life because love is completely absent in her world. She is rejected, shamed, and abused by her own parents, peers, and community members. Nevertheless, Milkman, the main character of Song of Solomon, gets healed by love. At the end of the novel, he is transformed to an integrated and loving individual. He is even willing to lay down his own life for his beloved aunt as well as his spiritual guide, Pilate. The first chapter of my thesis is a brief introduction to its major themes. Then, how family and social shame are internalized by African Americans is thoroughly probed in Chapter Two. In Chapter Three, I reveal how internalized racial shame traumatizes African Americans and what the aftermaths of the shame-induced trauma are. Chapter Four mainly deals with healing, and I propose that unconditional love is the only cure for toxic shame. In Chapter Five, to conclude my dissertation, I not only restate my arguments, but also do demonstrate how Morrison’s writing techniques correspond to them.
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Gagean, Alexandra Maria de Vasconcellos Conde. "The Gothic and Grotesque in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Dissertação, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/10216/130828.
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Chu, Li Ta, and 鞠立達. "The Black Female Selfhood in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Thesis, 1995. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/43591545100576495808.
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Gagean, Alexandra Maria de Vasconcellos Conde. "The Gothic and Grotesque in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon." Master's thesis, 2020. https://hdl.handle.net/10216/130828.
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Yi, Chung, and 鍾儀. "Journey / Exile: the Construction / Destruction of the Self in Toni Morrison''s Song of Solomon and William Faulkner''s Light in August." Thesis, 2003. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/81618636326975881094.
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碩士中國文化大學
英國語文學研究所
91
Abstract The aim of this thesis is to explore the process of self-construction in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and William Faulkner’s Light in August through the perspectives of Foucauldian the disciplinary power theory, and Bakhtinian Double- Voiced Discourse and Chronotope. Morrison and Faulkner both deal with the life-long journeys of self-construction of their heroes, Morrison’s Milkman Dead and Faulkner’s Joe Christmas. Nevertheless, Milkman and Joe''s journeys of self-construction are essentially different. Milkman’s travel in search of his self is one with a destination: his investigation of his ancestors’ past leads him to a spiritual home. However, Joe’s journey is a self-destructive form of exile: he is doomed to restlessly wander around. His ambiguous identity ultimately leads him to a suicidal self. In Chapter One, using Michel Foucault’s theory of the disciplinary power, I aim to show that Milkman and Joes’ alienation from society is caused by the power of discourses. I argue that the two heroes’ subjects/subjectivities are produced within such discourses. That is, two heroes’ identities are not biological facts but represent the definition of the society. Besides, two heroes both suffer from the alienation caused by the dichotomy of center / margin of the social discourse. In Chapter Two, I attempt to discuss the construction of the self through M. M. Bakhtin’s double-voiced discourse. The society represents a world of contesting social ideologies, and both heroes, in their quest for the self, undergo a struggle between these ideologies. In Song of Solomon, the society represents the tension between two different ideologies: Macon’s monologic world of epic and Pilate’s polyphonic world of novel. Milkman is controlled by both Macon’s centripetal and Pilate’s centrifugal forces. In Light in August, Joe Christmas is also situated in such conflicting social ideologies: the monologic world of the town people and the polyphonic world of the strangers. Besides, he is controlled by both the authoritatively persuasive discourse of the white society and the internally persuasive discourse of his black identity. In Chapter Three, I want to discuss the becoming-of-self through Bakhtin’s theory of the chronotope. Applying Bakhtin’s idea of Bildungsroman about the hero’s development of self-formation, I claim that both Milkman and Joe have experienced a life-long travel of self-becoming but the results of their journeys are different. For Milkman, during the journey in search for the past of his ancestor, history leads him to find his true self and to reach maturity. However, Joe’s journey represents a doomed and restless form of exile. Within the contesting white-black societies, he is led to a suicidal self-transformation. Thus in the end, his subjectivity is destroyed, and he ultimately becomes the scapegoat of the conflicting socio-cultural ideologies. Therefore, the hero’s quest for a self can be seen as a series of transformations constructed by the dialogue with history. To conclude, through a comparative study of Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Faulkner’s Light in August, my thesis will focus on the issue of self-construction.
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Chuen-shin, Tai, and 戴春馨. "Rememory of the Black Ancestry: The New Afro-American Hero in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Beloved." Thesis, 2002. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/73331075891416079265.
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碩士國立高雄師範大學
英語學系
90
Abstract This thesis sets out to explore Morrison’s claim that without the rootedness of their black ancestors, blacks are lost and nameless. By discovering the significance of their black history, folklore and heritage, blacks can recover from the uprootedness of their blackness and become the new Afro-American hero. My discussion is based on Morrison’s work as a revision and rewriting of a buried black culture in a white literary canon. Morrison states that blacks are misread and assimilated according to white concepts. I propose to examine the various ways in which Morrison challenges the dominant idea of whiteness and illustrates the reconstruction of the black community through rememory. Rememory is a memory that goes beyond individual memory and at a deeper level draws from a collective historical memory. Thus Morrison’s work represents the rich testimony of black history. This thesis is composed of five chapters. The first chapter explains the absence of black text in a white authorized field. By revising the diagram of Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, I draw a new diagram representing Morrison’s version of a black hero. Moreover, through Africanism, Morrison states the presence of black values in the white world. The second chapter denotes Morrison’s rejection and elimination of the imposed white cultural baggage. Morrison presents a healing process through a sense of rootedness based on one’s black ancestors. The third chapter focuses on Milkman’s quest for his black identity in Song of Solomon. From the journey, Milkman traces his way back to his lost culture and reconnects himself with his black roots. Chapter Four centers on the “rememory” of one’s black ancestors in Beloved. Through rememory, characters achieve their black subjectivity and reunite with their black community. The last chapter concludes with an analysis of Morrison’s interviews and a comparison of Morrison with other black female writers. Instead of repressing the past, to survive the blacks must live out the wisdom of their ancestors.
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Kao, Sandy Hsin-Yi, and 高心怡. "A Bakhtinean Reading On The Issue Of Identity: The Time-Space Continuum, Voices And Folk Songs In Toni Morrison's Song Of Solomon." Thesis, 1999. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/82793089388466171955.
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碩士輔仁大學
英國語文學系
87
This thesis centers on the issue of identity in Toni Morrison's＿ Song of Solomon＿ with Bakhtin's concepts of time-space continuum, mutiple voices and cultural aspects. The goal is to explore the problem of identity through the growth of Macon Dead III [Milkman], the protagonist, in the novel. As Milkman undergoes his journey to find his selfhood, he hears different versions of family history, travels various places, and finally traces back to his past and root. When Milkman comes to realize the meaning of his family song, he understands who he is and what he will become. The contentis divided into three parts--the time and space continuum, the different voices and the folk songs--the function and meaning of each section make Milkman perceive a more complete vision of his past as well as himself. Each part plays a significant role in the process of Milkman's transformation. When he is able to connect the past, places, various stories and the songs together, Milkman becomes a person with past, present and future. Through analyzing these elemetns in Song of Solomon, hofefully we will have a better understanding of the quest of identity and a chace to experience the uniqueness of Afro-American culture.
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Smith, Nicole. "Usable pasts possibilities of transnational memory in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster monkey: a fake book and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon /." 2005. http://purl.galileo.usg.edu/uga%5Fetd/smith%5Fnicole%5Fa%5F200505%5Fma.
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Hamdi, Houda. "Faulkner revisited : narrating property, race, gender and history in William Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day." Thèse, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1866/16011.
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My thesis explores the formation of the subject in the novels of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. I attach the concept of property in terms of how male protagonists are obsessed with materialistic ownership and with the subordination of women who, as properties, consolidate their manhood. The three novelists despite their racial, gendered, and literary differences share the view that identity and truth are mere social and cultural constructs. I incorporate the work of Judith Butler and other poststructuralist figures, who see identity as a matter of performance rather than a natural entity.
My thesis explores the theme of freedom, which I attached to the ways characters use their bodies either to confine or to emancipate themselves from the restricting world of race, class, and gender. The three novelists deconstruct any system of belief that promulgates the objectivity of truth in historical documents. History in the three novels, as with the protagonists, perception of identity, remains a social construct laden with distortions to serve particular political or ideological agendas.
My thesis gives voice to African American female characters who are associated with love and racial and gender resistance. They become the reservoirs of the African American legacy in terms of their association with the oral and intuitionist mode of knowing, which subverts the male characters’ obsession with property and with the mainstream empiricist world.
In this dissertation, I use the concept of hybridity as a literary and theoretical devise that African-American writers employ. In effect, I embark on the postcolonial studies of Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford, and Arjun Appadurai in order to reflect upon the fluidity of Morrison’s and Naylor’s works. I show how these two novelists subvert Faulkner’s essentialist perception of truth, and of racial and gendered identity. They associate the myth of the Flying African with the notion of hybridity by making their male protagonists criss-cross Northern and Southern regions.
I refer to Mae Gwendolyn Henderson’s article on “Speaking in Tongues” in my analysis of how Naylor subverts the patriarchal text of both Faulkner and Morrison in embarking on a more feminine version of the flying African, which she relates to an ex-slave, Sapphira Wade, a volatile female character who resists fixed claim over her story and identity. In dealing with the concept of hybridity, I show that Naylor rewrites both authors’ South by making Willow Springs a more fluid space, an assumption that unsettles the scores of critics who associate the island with authenticity and exclusive rootedness.Ma thèse est une étude comparative entre William Faulkner, Toni Morrison et Gloria Naylor. Elle me permet d’explorer comment les protagonistes males construisent leur identités en se référant à la possession matérialiste et en se basant sur la subordination de la femme, qui est une autre forme de possession, afin de consolider leur masculinité. Dans leurs textes respectifs, Go Down, Moses, Song of Solomon, et Mama Day, les trois auteurs, malgré leur différences culturelles et même littéraires, partagent l’idée que l’identité, l’histoire, et la vérité ne sont que des construits culturels et sociales. On se basant sur la théorie de Judith Butler et d’autres théoriciens poststructuralistes et contemporains, ma thèse reflète qu’il n’y a pas d’identité « naturelle » ou de réalité objective. La perception identitaire n’est qu’une illusion imaginaire et idéologique ou le sujet ne fait que répéter et performer le discours de son environnent. Faulkner, Morrison, et Naylor basent leurs oeuvres sur le thème de la liberté. Ils explorent comment, à partir de leurs corps, leurs caractères se conforment ou bien se détachent de l’idéologie qui confine leurs identités sexuelles, raciales et sociales. En critiquant, non seulement l’identité’ mais aussi l’histoire, ma thèse montre que les trois écrivains détruisent la perception que la vérité est objective surtout dans les documents historiques. Ainsi, la vérité devient qu’une forme de distorsion qui consolide une certaine idéologie. Ma thèse montre que les trois auteurs mettent en valeur la voix de la femme Afro-Américaine. Elle joue le rôle d’une médiatrice pour les protagonistes males. Elle rejette le discours matérialiste et sexiste. Cette voix féminine représente le thème de l’amour et la survie de sa communauté noire et la résistance raciale. La femme Afro-Américaine préserve la culture Africaine à travers son attachement à la tradition orale et à la connaissance intuitive. En se basant sur la tendance subversive de l’art et de la littérature postcoloniale qui est promulguée par les théories de Henry Louise Gates, Paul Gilroy, W. E. B Du Bois, James Clifford et Arjun Appadurai, je montre qu’à travers Toni Morrison et Gloria Naylor, le texte de Faulkner reste logocentrique et essentialiste dans sa vision hiérarchique de l’identité raciale et sexuelle. Morrison et Naylor se référant au mythe de l’Africain volant afin de justifier qu’il n’y a pas d’identité fixe et stable, donnant ainsi la voix a une identité hybride et fluide. En se basant sur l’article, « Parler en Langues » de Mae Gwendolyn Henderson, ma thèse explore comment en réécrivant d’autres textes, Gloria Naylor déconstruit non seulement Faulkner, mais aussi le sexisme qui demeure résident dans le texte de Toni Morrison. L’histoire de Willow Springs se base sur le mythe féminin d’une ex esclave Sapphira Wade, qui en étant volatile, son histoire et son identité résistent toute forme de catégorisations. En étudiant l’hybridité’ dans la culture Afro-Américaine, ma thèse montre que le Sud qui est décrit dans l’oeuvre de Mama Day est plus hybride que celui de Faulkner et Morrison.
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Chou, Wei-Wei, and 鄒薇薇. "Female Selfhood in Tori Morrison's Song of Solomon in Joyce Carol Oates' I Lock My Door Upon Myself." Thesis, 1996. http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/82684231794538581349.
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碩士中國文化大學
西洋文學研究所
85
Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates are famous contemporary feministwriters, they both vividly describes the oppressed female characters in their works to present the problems in a patriarchal, racist and capitalisticsociety. Both of them offer many valuable survival strategies to these oppressed women. In the study, I attempt to examine the oppressed female'sselfhood as demonstrated in the works. There are four chapters in this thesis. Chapter one introduces the authors and their works, as well as the purposes contained in these works. This chapter also discusses the oppression in the patriarchal, racist and capitalisticsociety toward women and blacks. Chapter two examines Morrison's motivationand expectation and the female characters' selfhood in Song of Solomonfocusing especially on Pilate's self-determing selfhood. Chapter three presents the relationship between Oates and her work, Calla's and the narrator's selfhood, and Oates' expectation toward future. Chapter four focuses on the similar and different oppression between black women and white women and the survival strategies for women in an oppressive society.