Narrative Strategies and Traumatic Experience in Toni Morrison’s Trilogy
| Thesis title in Czech: | Narativní strategie a traumatická zkušenost v trilogii Toni Morrison |
|---|---|
| Thesis title in English: | Narrative Strategies and Traumatic Experience in Toni Morrison’s Trilogy |
| Key words: | Afroamerická literatura|Afroamerická zkušenost|Jazz|Milovaná|Narativní strategie|Opakování|Orální vyprávění|Orální tradice|Ráj|Retrospekce|Teorie traumatu|Toni Morrisonová|Trauma|hlas |
| English key words: | African American experience|African American literature|Beloved|Jazz|Narrative strategies|Oral narrative|Oral tradition|Paradise|Repetition|Retrospection|Toni Morrison|Trauma|Trauma theory|voice |
| Academic year of topic announcement: | 2020/2021 |
| Thesis type: | diploma thesis |
| Thesis language: | angličtina |
| Department: | Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK) |
| Supervisor: | Mgr. Pavla Veselá, Ph.D. |
| Author: | hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept. |
| Date of registration: | 01.12.2020 |
| Date of assignment: | 02.12.2020 |
| Administrator's approval: | not processed yet |
| Confirmed by Study dept. on: | 09.12.2020 |
| Date and time of defence: | 09.09.2021 00:00 |
| Date of electronic submission: | 15.08.2021 |
| Date of proceeded defence: | 09.09.2021 |
| Submitted/finalized: | committed by student and finalized |
| Opponents: | PhDr. Hana Ulmanová, Ph.D. |
| Guidelines |
| This thesis will examine narrative strategies in the novels of Morrison’s self-declared trilogy: Beloved, Jazz and Paradise. The strategies employed in the novels will be considered in terms of selected Western narrative theory as well as in the context of narrative strategies significant especially to African American expression inherited from various African oral narratives. The theory of trauma, based on the works of Saidiya V. Hartman and Irene Visser, will also be introduced to better understand the experiences presented in the novels and to find possible links between dealing with trauma and Morrison’s narrative approach. This thesis will attempt to prove that Morrison employs narrative strategies of the African American tradition to represent the traumatic events the characters endure, and therefore to illustrate the condition of black experience under white supremacy. Strategies, such as repetition and retrospection, will be analysed in each novel, presented in individual chapters in chronological order. Those aspects will be interpreted by the method of close reading based on previous study of suitable secondary sources to examine how those narrative strategies relate to the traumatic experience of the focalised characters, and consequently the black experience. |
| References |
| Primary sources Morrison, Beloved. London: Penguin Random House, 2016. Jazz. London: Penguin Random House, 2016. Paradise. London: Penguin Random House, 2016. Secondary sources Baker Jr., Houston A. Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular Theory. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984. Balaev, Michael. Contemporary Approaches in Literary Trauma Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2014. Bast, Florian. “Reading Red: The Troping of Trauma in Tori Morrison’s Beloved.” Callaloo 34.4 (2011): 1069-1086. JSTOR Bayerman, Keith. Remembering the Past in Contemporary African American Fiction. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Bloom, Harold. Toni Morrison. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990. Butler-Evans, Elliott. Race, Gender, and Desire: Narrative Strategies in the Fiction of Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. -----. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Cutter, Martha J. “The Story Must Go on and on: The Fantastic, Narration, and Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz.” African American Review 34.1 (2000): 61-75. JSTOR Durrant, Sam. Postcolonial Narrative and the Work of Mourning: J. M. Coetzee, Wilson Harris, and Toni Morrison. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. Fludernik, Monika. An Introduction to Narratology. New York: Routledge, 2009. Furman, Jan. Toni Morrison’s Fiction: Revised and Expanded Edition. South Carolina: University of South Carolina, 2014. Gates, Jr., Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. 5th Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Gates, Jr., Henry Louis, Appiah, K.A. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad Press Inc., 1993. Gillespie, Carmen. A Critical Companion to Toni Morrison: Literary Reference to Her Life and Work. New York: Facts On File, Inc, 2008. Goldenson, Robert M. Longman Dictionary of Psychology and Psychiatry. New York: Longman Inc, 1984. Hartman, Saidiya V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Koolish, Lynda. “Fictive Strategies and Cinematic Representations in Toni Morrison’s Beloved: Postcolonial Theory/Postcolonial Text.” African American Review 29.3 (1995): 421 - 438. JSTOR Krumholz, Linda J. “Reading and Insight in Toni Morrison’s Paradise.” African American Review 36.1 (2002): 21-34. JSTOR Page, Phillip. “Circularity in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” African American Review 26.1 (1992): 31-39. JSTOR Patell, Cyrus R.K. Negative Liberties: Morrison, Pynchon, and the Problem of Liberal Ideology. London: Duke University Press, 2001. Peterson, Nancy J. Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Rice, Alan J. “Jazzing It up a Storm: The Execution and Meaning of Toni Morrison's Jazzy Prose Style.” Journal of American Studies 28.3 (1994): 423-432. JSTOR Roynon, Tessa. Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition: Transforming American Culture. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. Schreiber, Evelyn Jaffe. Race, Trauma, and Home in the Novels of Toni Morrison. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. Spargo, R. Clifton. “Trauma and the Specters of Enslavement in Morrison's ‘Beloved.’” Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 35.1 (2002): 113-131. Tally, Justine. The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Taylor-Guthrie, Danielle. Conversations with Toni Morrison. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994. Visser, Irene. “Decolonizing Trauma Theory: Retrospect and Prospects.” Humanities 4 (2015): 250-265. -----. “Entanglements of Trauma: Relationality and Toni Morrison's Home.” Postcolonial Text 9.2 (2014): 1-21. -----. “Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 4.3 (2011): 270-282. <10.1080/17449855.2011.569378> 20 Nov 2020. |