The purpose of this study has been to determine what extraliterary forces--cultural, historical, political, social--shaped the critical reception of Alice Walker's first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970). The philosophies of Hans Robert Jauss, as espoused in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (1971), guided this study. Particular interest was placed on Jauss's claim that every work has its own specific, historically, and sociological determinable audience, that every writer is dependent on the milieu, view, and ideology of that audience and that literary success presupposes a book which presents what the audience expects, a book which presents the audience with its own image. (26)The Third Life of Grange Copeland appeared at the end of the Civil Rights Movement, in the midst of a Black Arts Movement (a movement that presented black artist with a criteria for representing their people), and on the cusp of a black feminist movement which moved black women from the object to the subject position in black literary discourse.The politically charged context in which Walker's first novel appeared determined her first audience's reception to her work. The reception from black civic leaders, literary critics, scholars and the black community was largely negative. This initial negative response has followed Walker throughout her literary career despite the fact that she has won both the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. / Department of English

Literary scholars have been examining and recreating the experiences of “bonded” female characters within Toni Morrison’s novels for decades. However, the distinct experiences of these enslaved women, that are also mothers have not been astutely examined by scholars and deserves more attention. My thesis fleshes out the characterization of several of Morrison’s bonded-mothers and identifies them as a part of a developing controlling image and theory, called the bondmother. Situating these characters within this category allows readers to trace their journeys towards freedom and personal redemption. This character tracing will occur by examining the following Toni Morrison novels: Beloved (1987) and Paradise (1997). In order to fully examine the experiences of these characters it will be necessary for me to expand the definition of bondage and mother. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection