Toni Morrison's Fiction

Jan Furman

Description

In this revised introduction to Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison's novels, Jan Furman extends and updates her critical commentary. New chapters on four novels following the publication of Jazz in 1992 continue Furman's explorations of Morrison's themes and narrative strategies. In all Furman surveys ten works that include the trilogy novels, a short story, and a book of criticism to identify Morrison's recurrent concern with the destructive tensions that define human experience: the clash of gender and authority, the individual and community, race and national identity, culture and authenticity, and the self and other.

As Furman demonstrates, Morrison more often than not renders meaning for characters and readers through an unflinching inquiry, if not resolution, of these enduring conflicts. She is not interested in tidy solutions. Enlightened self-love, knowledge, and struggle, even without the promise of salvation, are the moral measure of Morrison's characters, fiction, and literary imagination.

Tracing Morrison's developing art and her career as a public intellectual, Furman examines the novels in order of publication. She also decodes their collective narrative chronology, which begins in the late seventeenth century and ends in the late twentieth century, as Morrison delineates three hundred years of African American experience. In Furman's view Morrison tells new and difficult stories of old, familiar histories such as the making of Colonial America and the racing of American society.

In the final chapters Furman pays particular attention to form, noting Morrison's continuing practice of the kind of "deep" novelistic structure that transcends plot and imparts much of a novel's meaning. Furman demonstrates, through her helpful analyses, how engaging such innovations can be.

Sujets

• Literary Criticism
• América
• Sapphira and the Slave Girl
• The Philosopher
• The Art of Fiction (book)
• Tar Baby (novel)
• G. (novel)
• Margaret Garner
• Maternal insult
• Beloved (novel)
• Song of Solomon (novel)
• Dick and Jane
• Misery (novel)
• Desperation
• General officer
• African American
• General
• American
• Dred Scott
• Edna O'Brien
• Black
• Jean Harlow
• Fiction
• Tennessee Williams
• Toni Morrison

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 19 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 6
• EAN13: 9781611173673
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

TONI MORRISON S FICTION
Revised and Expanded Edition
UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN LITERATURE Matthew J. Bruccoli, Founding Editor Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
Volumes on Edward Albee | Sherman Alexie | Nelson Algren | Paul Auster Nicholson Baker | John Barth | Donald Barthelme | The Beats Thomas Berger | The Black Mountain Poets | Robert Bly | T. C. Boyle Truman Capote | Raymond Carver | Michael Chabon | Fred Chappell Chicano Literature | Contemporary American Drama Contemporary American Horror Fiction Contemporary American Literary Theory Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1926-1970 Contemporary American Science Fiction, 1970-2000 Contemporary Chicana Literature | Robert Coover | Philip K. Dick James Dickey | E. L. Doctorow | Rita Dove | John Gardner | George Garrett Tim Gautreaux | John Hawkes | Joseph Heller | Lillian Hellman | Beth Henley James Leo Herlihy | David Henry Hwang | John Irving | Randall Jarrell Charles Johnson | Diane Johnson | Adrienne Kennedy | William Kennedy Jack Kerouac | Jamaica Kincaid | Etheridge Knight | Tony Kushner Ursula K. Le Guin | Denise Levertov | Bernard Malamud | David Mamet Bobbie Ann Mason | Colum McCann | Cormac McCarthy | Jill McCorkle Carson McCullers | W. S. Merwin | Arthur Miller | Stephen Millhauser Lorrie Moore | Toni Morrison s Fiction | Vladimir Nabokov | Gloria Naylor Joyce Carol Oates | Tim O Brien | Flannery O Connor | Cynthia Ozick Suzan-Lori Parks | Walker Percy | Katherine Anne Porter | Richard Powers Reynolds Price | Annie Proulx | Thomas Pynchon | Theodore Roethke Philip Roth | May Sarton | Hubert Selby, Jr. | Mary Lee Settle | Sam Shepard Neil Simon | Isaac Bashevis Singer | Jane Smiley | Gary Snyder | William Stafford Robert Stone | Anne Tyler | Gerald Vizenor | Kurt Vonnegut David Foster Wallace | Robert Penn Warren | James Welch | Eudora Welty Edmund White | Tennessee Williams | August Wilson | Charles Wright
TONI MORRISON S FICTION
Revised and Expanded Edition
Jan Furman
1996 University of South Carolina New material 2014 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Furman, Jan.
Toni Morrison s fiction / Jan Furman. - Revised and expanded edition.
pages cm. - (Understanding contemporary American literature)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-366-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-61117-367-3 (ebook) 1. Morrison, Toni-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Women and literature-United States-History-20th century. 3. African American women in literature. 4. African Americans in literature. I. Title.
PS3563.O8749Z65 2014
813 .54-dc23
2013036703
For the girls
CONTENTS
Series Editor s Preface
Preface
Chapter 1
Understanding Toni Morrison
Chapter 2
Black Girlhood and Black Womanhood: The Bluest Eye and Sula
Chapter 3
Male Consciousness: Song of Solomon
Chapter 4
Community and Cultural Identity: Tar Baby
Chapter 5
Remembering the Disremembered : Beloved
Chapter 6
City Blues: Jazz
Chapter 7
Utopia and Moral Hazard: Paradise
Chapter 8
The Language of Love: Love
Chapter 9
The Race[ing] of Slavery: A Mercy
Chapter 10
A Lesson of Manhood: Home
Chapter 11
Literary and Social Criticism: Playing in the Dark
Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
The Understanding Contemporary American Literature series was founded by the estimable Matthew J. Bruccoli (1931-2008), who envisioned these volumes as guides or companions for students as well as good nonacademic readers, a legacy that will continue as new volumes are developed to fill in gaps among the nearly one hundred series volumes published to date and to embrace a host of new writers only now making their marks on our literature.
As Professor Bruccoli explained in his preface to the volumes he edited, because much influential contemporary literature makes special demands, the word understanding in the titles was chosen deliberately. Many willing readers lack an adequate understanding of how contemporary literature works; that is, of what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. Aimed at fostering this understanding of good literature and good writers, the criticism and analysis in the series provide instruction in how to read certain contemporary writers-explicating their material, language, structures, themes, and perspectives-and facilitate a more profitable experience of the works under discussion.
In the twenty-first century Professor Bruccoli s prescience gives us an avenue to publish expert critiques of significant contemporary American writing. The series continues to map the literary landscape and to provide both instruction and enjoyment. Future volumes will seek to introduce new voices alongside canonized favorites, to chronicle the changing literature of our times, and to remain, as Professor Bruccoli conceived, contemporary in the best sense of the word.
Linda Wagner-Martin, Series Editor
PREFACE
Since the publication of Toni Morrison s Fiction in 1996, Morrison has written four novels. These novels, primarily, are the focus of this revised commentary. Discussion of earlier books is largely unchanged, and four new chapters offer readings of the texts and multiple contexts. That is not to suggest that there is not a correspondence between the older and newer books. Eliot is correct in observing that
what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. 1
This matter of alteration of the whole by the new is addressed in a revised, although not substantially changed introduction, and the added chapters inevitably acknowledge conversation among the novels.
And yet the impetus for all the chapters here is exploring Morrison s aims for each book project as these relate to voice, narrative structure, historical context, thematic focus, and pedagogy. The novels are problem sets for Morrison, a way of sustained problematizing. 2 As she says, writing [each novel] for me is an enormous act of discovery. I have all these problems that are perhaps a little weary and general and well-worked-over that I want to domesticate and conquer. Then I can sort of figure out what I think about all this and get a little further along (136).
CHAPTER 1
Understanding Toni Morrison
In a writing life that spans more than four decades, Toni Morrison has produced ten novels, a significant book of literary criticism, two plays, two edited essay volumes on sociopolitical themes, a libretto, lyrics for two productions of song cycles performed by the American operatic soprano Jessye Norman and another song collection performed by the American soprano Kathleen Battle. She has coauthored nine children s books, published numerous essays on literature and culture, and played an international role in supporting and encouraging art and artists. Morrison is also a poet and public intellectual. 1 Hers is the dancing mind, a term Morrison uses to describe the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open mind . . . most often in the reading/writing world we live in. 2
The metaphor of an enlightened mind in dance form is taken from Morrison s acceptance speech for the Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters at the 1996 National Book Awards. In her talk, Morrison recalled an encounter with a writer in Strasbourg, Germany, where they were both attending a meeting of the Parliament of Writers. At the end of one symposium, the writer approached Morrison with an impassioned plea for help. They are shooting us [women writers] down in the street, she said. You must help. . . . There isn t anybody else. 3 Morrison offered the story as a cautionary note for her audience and to insist in that particularly relevant setting that the writing/reading space must be free, that no encroachment of private wealth, government control, or cultural expediency . . . [should] interfere with what gets written or published. 4 Language is agency for Morrison, and she champions its role in shaping creative possibilities.
Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931. The name Toni and its origin are the subject of some conjecture. 5 Morrison has said she changed her name in college because people found Chloe difficult to pronounce; as a nickname she adopted a version of St. Anthony, her baptismal name. When her first book was published, Morrison notes that she called the publisher to say I put the wrong name. But it was too late. [The book] had already gone to the Library of Congress. 6 She adds that Chloe is my sister s sister. She is my niece s aunt. She is a girl I know and private. It pleases me to have these two names. . . . It s useful for me. Toni Morrison is a kind of invention. A nice invention. 7
Morrison grew up in Lorain, Ohio, a Lake Erie town of about forty-five thousand people, 8 with her parents, George and Ramah Wofford, an older sister, and two younger brothers. She left Lorain