Amazon cover image
Image from Amazon.com

Spectrality in the novels of Toni MorrisonMelanie Anderson.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Knoxville : University of Tennessee Press, (c)2013.Edition: first editionDescription: 1 online resourceContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • computer
Carrier type:
  • online resource
ISBN:
  • 9781572339804
Subject(s): Genre/Form: LOC classification:
  • PS3563 .S643 2013
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
Contents:
Spectral beginnings in The bluest eye and Sula -- "Why not ghosts as well?" the presence of the spectral in song of solomon and tar baby -- "What would be on the other side?" history as a spectral bridge in Beloved and Paradise -- "The specter as possibility": ghostly narrators in Jazz and Love -- "Slave. Free. I last": spectral returns in A mercy.
Subject: At first glance, Beloved would appear to be the only "ghost story" among Toni Morrison's nine novels, but as this provocative new study shows, spectral presences and places abound in the celebrated author's fiction. Melanie R. Anderson explores how Morrison uses specters to bring the traumas of African American life to the forefront, highlighting histories and experiences, both cultural and personal, that society at large too frequently ignores. Working against the background of magical realism, while simultaneously expanding notions of the supernatural within American and African American writing, Morrison peoples her novels with what Anderson identifies as two distinctive types of ghosts: spectral figures and social ghosts. Deconstructing Western binaries, Morrison uses the spectral to indicate power through its transcendence of corporality, temporality, and explication, and she employs the ghostly as a metaphor of erasure for living characters who are marginalized and haunt the edges of their communities. The interaction of these social ghosts with the spectral presences functions as a transformative healing process that draws the marginalized figure out of the shadows and creates links across ruptures between generations and between past and present, life and death. This book examines how these relationships become increasingly more prominent in the novelist's canon-from their beginnings in The Bluest Eye and Sula, to their flowering in the trilogy that comprises Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise, and onward into A Mercy. An important contribution to the understanding of one of America's premier fiction writers, Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison demonstrates how the Nobel laureate's powerful and challenging works give presence to the invisible, voice to the previously silenced, and agency to the oppressed outsiders who are refused a space in which to narrate their stories.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Call number URL Status Date due Barcode
Online Book (LOGIN USING YOUR MY CIU LOGIN AND PASSWORD) Online Book (LOGIN USING YOUR MY CIU LOGIN AND PASSWORD) G. Allen Fleece Library ONLINE Non-fiction PS3563.8749 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Link to resource Available ocn829172878

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction: "What does it mean to follow a ghost" in Toni Morrison's fiction? -- Spectral beginnings in The bluest eye and Sula -- "Why not ghosts as well?" the presence of the spectral in song of solomon and tar baby -- "What would be on the other side?" history as a spectral bridge in Beloved and Paradise -- "The specter as possibility": ghostly narrators in Jazz and Love -- "Slave. Free. I last": spectral returns in A mercy.

At first glance, Beloved would appear to be the only "ghost story" among Toni Morrison's nine novels, but as this provocative new study shows, spectral presences and places abound in the celebrated author's fiction. Melanie R. Anderson explores how Morrison uses specters to bring the traumas of African American life to the forefront, highlighting histories and experiences, both cultural and personal, that society at large too frequently ignores. Working against the background of magical realism, while simultaneously expanding notions of the supernatural within American and African American writing, Morrison peoples her novels with what Anderson identifies as two distinctive types of ghosts: spectral figures and social ghosts. Deconstructing Western binaries, Morrison uses the spectral to indicate power through its transcendence of corporality, temporality, and explication, and she employs the ghostly as a metaphor of erasure for living characters who are marginalized and haunt the edges of their communities. The interaction of these social ghosts with the spectral presences functions as a transformative healing process that draws the marginalized figure out of the shadows and creates links across ruptures between generations and between past and present, life and death. This book examines how these relationships become increasingly more prominent in the novelist's canon-from their beginnings in The Bluest Eye and Sula, to their flowering in the trilogy that comprises Beloved, Jazz, and Paradise, and onward into A Mercy. An important contribution to the understanding of one of America's premier fiction writers, Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison demonstrates how the Nobel laureate's powerful and challenging works give presence to the invisible, voice to the previously silenced, and agency to the oppressed outsiders who are refused a space in which to narrate their stories.

COPYRIGHT NOT covered - Click this link to request copyright permission:

https://lib.ciu.edu/copyright-request-form

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.