scholarly journals The Experience of Alienation in Toni Morrison’s Work: Man’s Fragmentation and Concomitant Distortion

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Mohammed Mahameed ◽  
Majed Abdul Karim
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Modern Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Work

The question of alienation has always been a pervasive theme in the history of modern thought, and it occupies a considerable place in contemporary work. Literature in general, and fiction in particular, raise this issue to reveal its influence on human beings and communities. Novelists have been trying to unravel its complexities and concomitant consequences. The paper aims to explore the experience of alienation through depicting the issue not as a purely racial reality, or something restricted to the colour of the skin or gender of the victim. It is rather presented as a distressing state which cripples the victims and makes them susceptible captives of the dominant forces. In the selected novels, Toni Morrison has delved deep into the experience of alienation through her male and female characters, showing the different forms of this experience. The present research investigates Morrison’s portrayal of the issue from an African-American prospect. References will be made to novels such as Tar Baby, Sula, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved.

scholarly journals Theorizing Black Power Movement in African American Literature: An Analysis of Morrison's Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol V (IV) ◽  
pp. 45-53
Author(s):  
Fayaz Ahmad Kumar ◽  
Colette Morrow
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black Power ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Black Power Movement ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Black Aesthetics ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Author

This paper analyzes the influence of the Black Power movement on the AfricanAmerican literary productions; especially in the fictional works of Toni Morrison. As an African-American author, Toni Morrison presents the idea of 'Africanness' in her novels. Morrison's fiction comments on the fluid bond amongst the African-American community, the Black Power and Black Aesthetics. The works of Morrison focus on various critical points in the history of African-Americans, her fiction recalls not only the memory of Africa but also contemplates the contemporary issues. Morrison situates the power politics within the framework of literature by presenting the history of the African-American cultures.

scholarly journals Quest for Identity in the novels of Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1183-1188
Author(s):  
Nehdeep Lakra, Et. al.
Keyword(s):  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Black Americans ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Family Culture ◽  
Personal Relations ◽  
Search For Self

Identity is often described as finite and consists of separate and distinct parts such as; family, culture, personal relations and profession, to name a few. The formation of identity is an ever – evolving one wherein our genealogy, culture, loved ones, those we cared for, people who have harmed us and people we have harmed, our memories of the various phases of life, or the deeds done to oneself and to others, experiences lived and choices made, all come together to form who one is, at a given moment. The black Americans in the select novels are neglected even not to be considered as human beings, deprived of their rights. This article deals with the search for self as to who they truly are in the novel of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and The Bluest Eye. Identity is the uniqueness of a person and when it is lost, the person loses everything in his life.

scholarly journals A Comparative Study of Similarities between Morrison and Tie Ning

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Lin Zhu
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Parallel Method ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
Feminist Consciousness ◽  
American Author ◽  
Contemporary Author

The thesis, employing parallel method in comparative literary study and an approach of feminism, conducts a comparison in the light of a lack of feminist consciousness and a hostile outlet of feminist consciousness in The Bluest Eye and Sula by Toni Morrison, an African American author, and Gate of Roses by Tie Ning, a Chinese contemporary author, which illustrates that an extreme feminist consciousness does damage to a healthy feminist consciousness.

Toni Morrison’s Shulamites

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana Pardes
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Folk Songs ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Biblical Criticism ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Feminine Sexuality ◽  
Love Poem ◽  
The Many

This chapter focuses on Toni Morrison’s renditions of new Shulamites in Song of Solomon (1977) and Beloved (1987). The female characters of both novels highlight the power and bold eroticism of the Shulamite’s voice, calling for a different perception of gender relations and feminine sexuality. While offering new representations of femininity, Morrison is no less eager to fashion a new grand Song as a base for a redefinition of the African-American community. In Song of Solomon, the ancient biblical love poem merges with African folk songs and legends and in Beloved, the ghostly Beloved is both a tormented and tormenting Shulamite as well as the spirit of the many slaves whose sufferings she embodies. Special attention is given to Morrison’s response to African-American commentaries on the verse ‘I am black, but comely’ and to points of affinity between her exegesis and feminist biblical criticism in the 1970s and 1980s.

scholarly journals A Study on the Postmodern Narrative Features in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 28
Author(s):  
Miaomiao WANG ◽  
Chengqi LIU
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Future Development ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Song Of Solomon ◽  
Narrative Conventions

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) is renowned as the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Her third novel Song of Solomon was written in the context of postmodernism, which embodies a variety of postmodern narrative features. Postmodern works are frequently inclined to ambiguity, anarchism, collage, discontinuity, fragmentation, indeterminacy, metafiction, montage, parody, and pluralism. Such postmodern narrative features as parody, metafiction and indeterminacy have been manifested in Song of Solomon. In this novel, Toni Morrison employs the strategy of parody in order to subvert traditional narrative modes and overthrow the western biblical narrative as well as African mythic structure. Meta-narratives are also used in the text to dissolve the authority of the omniscient and omnipotent narrator. By questioning and criticizing the traditional narrative conventions, Morrison creates a fictional world with durative indeterminacy and unanswered problems. Through presenting parody, metafiction and indeterminacy, this paper attempts to analyze the postmodern narrative features in Song of Solomon and further explore Morrison’s writing on the African-American community and its future development.

Black empowerment and Afro-American values in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye

IIUC Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Sajjadul Karim ◽  
Mohd Muzhafar Bin Idrus
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
American People ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
American Values ◽  
White Culture ◽  
History Of

The Bluest Eye of Toni Morrison is extraordinarily significant, as it addresses the different sides of American literature, and the lives of the Afro-American people. Although the conventional theological aspects of white culture can negatively influence other characters of Morrison, it is Pecola whose life appears to be increasingly defenseless against the impulses of the individuals who have accepted the Western custom. In a democratic country, people generally have the same value, but there are still prejudices in the concepts of beauty and worthiness. The search for freedom, black identity, the nature of evil and the robust voices of African-Americans have become themes for African-American literature. Folklore covers the history of black and white interaction in the United States and also summarizes the feelings expressed in protest literature1. Morrison argues that the survival of the dark ladies in a white dominated society depends on loving their own way of life and dark race and rejecting the models of white culture or white excellence. This article attempts to examine The Bluest Eye from the perspective of empowerment of blacks and African American and their value system. IIUC Studies Vol.16, December 2019: 111-121

Taxonomy and natural history of 18 Ropalidia species (Hymenoptera, Vespidae) of Madagascar

2012 ◽  
Vol 155 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 133-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo H.M. Blommers
Keyword(s):  
New Species ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Related Species ◽  
Valid Species ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Closely Related Species ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
History Of ◽  
Field Notes

Eighteen species of Ropalidia Guérin-Méneville, 1831 of Madagascar are treated, viz. those of which females and males were found together on one or more nests in the 1970s. The main purpose is to define the species by male and female characters since the latter alone are insufficient to distinguish closely related species. Ten new species are described: R. cocoscola, R. cauponae, R. merina, R. mysterica, R. favulorum, R. kojimai, R. rosae, R. cincinnata, R. perplexa and R. linearecta. R. flavoviridis Kojima, 1998 is a valid species, not a synonym of R. dubia (de Saussure, 1853). Seven species are redescribed with emphasis on male characters: R. shestakowi (von Schulthess, 1931), R. grandidieri (de Saussure, 1890), R. variabilis (de Saussure, 1890), R. phalansterica (de Saussure, 1853), R. carinata (de Saussure, 1890), R. dubia (de Saussure, 1853) and R. fraterna (de Saussure, 1900). Field notes on shape and location of nests are summarized and numbers of foundresses and subdominant females, as far as determined by dissection, reported. Various eulophid and tachinid parasitoids emerged from the nests; an attack by the ichneumonid Hemipimpla pulchripennis (de Saussure, 1890) is described.

scholarly journals Enfrentar las estructuras de opresión: sumisión, resiliencia y resistencia en Los ojos más azules y El color púrpura.

Sincronía ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol XXV (79) ◽  
pp. 345-369
Author(s):  
Ida María Ayala Rodríguez ◽  
◽  
Cristina Amalia Gavilla Lundeg ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Alice Walker ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Bluest Eye ◽  
The Color Purple ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times ◽  
Color Purple

This paper focuses on and compares several aspects of the novels The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and The Color Purple by Alice Walker. This analysis is preceded by a brief historical background of the times when the action of the novels take place, necessary to understand the history of racial discrimination and the prejudices that sustain this discrimination to our days. The discursion shows the main female characters reacting towards the different forms of oppression and to the systematic suppression of the necessary conditions for the normal development of their self- esteem as human beings. The self-esteem of some of them is so low that they cannot recover; others rise and are able to recover their lost self-esteem. We conclude that the lives of the characters in The Bluest Eye were influenced by racial, social and patriarchal prejudices, prevented from material advancement, and in some cases, how their expectations for a better life were crushed in the end leading them into catastrophic events. In The Color Purple, characters are able to overcome the effects of oppression with the help of the solidarity of women and their personalities can survive almost intact. Thus they show resilience in the face of adversity.

scholarly journals Exacavating the Memory of Slavery in Léonora Miano’s La Saison de l’ombre (2013) and Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1988)

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 12-22
Author(s):  
Abib SENE ◽  
Fatoumata Keïta
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Toni Morrison ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Counter Narratives ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
History Of ◽  
Maternal Love

Regarded as a state of servitude through which an individual or a group of persons is compelled to work their guts out without any possibility to get compensated or rewarded, slavery, for some centuries, had been implemented under various forms from one country to another. From the antiquity to the twentieth century, thralldom had been a profitable business that gangrened the African continent. Thus being, African and African American thinkers shoulder the mission to dust archives and lift the curtain of history to retell and re-narrate the episode of drudgery; among them Leonoa Miano and Toni Morrison. The purpose of this article is to examine the trauma of slavery from a comparative, matrifocal, and Afrocentric perspective so as to highlight commonalities and differences between Leonora Miano’s La Saison de l’ombre and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Inspired by the infamous history of slavery, these two award-winning novels not only conjure up the ordeal of slavery, but they also catalyze its haunting memory for the sake of healing, so that both characters and readers could be cleansed off its tantalizing grip and achieve catharsis and redemption. To this end, La Saison de l’ombre and Beloved are woven around feminine counter-narratives that exhibit counter-memories which are often glossed over or overlooked in both African and Euro-American phallocentric official narratives. Whereas La Saison de l’ombre spotlights the Africans’ role in the process of slavery, Beloved highlights the tragedy of a maternal love in a context of bondage. Through a comparative approach, we have spotlighted the whole process of slavery, from the captivity in Africa to enslavement in America.

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