I argue that William Wells Brown’s narrative, Clotel, is informed by the white racism inherent in Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia and reveals evidence of the trauma it has fostered transgenerationally. By examining Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I assert that the trauma of slavery is transmitted transgenerationally in the black female body. I develop my argument using trauma theory, postulated through the work of Cathy Caruth, Dori Laub, Diana Miles, Abraham and Maria Torok, and William Cross. My purpose is to reveal the relevance and lasting significance of the legacy of slavery in contemporary American society. Thomas Jefferson’s white supremacist ideas, along with the system of slavery which nurtured them, continue to plague contemporary American thought and continue to shape African American female identity.

“What does it mean, to make a genuine generalization, to create an objective concrete abstraction of a phenomenon?”—Evald Ilyenkov. As Guy Debord writes in his Society of the Spectacle, “the lack of general historical life also means that individual life as yet has no history.” These poems are my process of coming to understand history, and many of them are critiques of histories per se. If, as Frank O’Hara writes, “these anxieties remain erect,” they also shape the poems that I have written here. I want to be in dialogue with the spectacle that shapes postmodernism. I want to live in communication with the memories of events that have shaped my speech over the years. The title is a struggle to regain a home while not forgetting the displacement of the proverbial poet, a poet to whom I am forever indebted and probably likely to become.

[pt] Esta tese aborda a literatura da escritora afro-americana Toni Morrison traduzida no Brasil. Nesse sentido, são consideradas as seguintes traduções do romance Beloved (1987), as quais receberam o título de Amada: a de Evelyn Kay Massaro, publicada em 1989 pela editora Best Seller e em 1993 pelo Círculo do Livro, e a de José Rubens Siqueira, lançada em 2007 e, posteriormente, em 2011, pela Companhia das Letras. Utilizando como arcabouço teórico os Estudos Descritivos da Tradução e os Estudos Culturais, complementados pela visão de Lawrence Venuti sobre retraduções, a presente pesquisa visa a determinar e compreender o lugar sistêmico ocupado por Morrison e pelas traduções de Beloved no contexto cultural brasileiro em comparação à posição da autora e de seu romance no sistema de origem, os Estados Unidos. Para tanto, são trazidas à tona, entre outros fatores, reflexões sobre aspectos de recepção, focalizando os discursos de críticos, professores, outros autores e tradutores, o papel das editoras envolvidas e as ações de patronagem nos respectivos contextos. Além disso, é proposta uma análise dos paratextos e dos recursos textuais referentes às edições de Amada, levando-se em consideração as relações entre literatura, linguagem e questões étnico-raciais. / [en] This Ph.D. dissertation addresses the African-American female author Toni Morrison and her translated literature in Brazil. It focuses on the Brazilian translations of her novel Beloved (1987), published under the title Amada. The first translation was done by Evelyn Kay Massaro and launched by the publishing houses Best Seller and Circulo do Livro, in 1989 and 1993 respectively. The second one, by José Rubens Siqueira, was published by Companhia das Letras in 2007 and, subsequently, in 2011. This study will draw upon both Descriptive Translation Studies and the Cultural Studies, complemented by Lawrence Venuti s view on retranslations. Accordingly, this research aims to determine and understand the systemic function occupied by Morrison and the translations of Beloved in the Brazilian cultural context in comparison with the function of the writer and her novel in the source system, the United States. Therefore, reception aspects, focusing on critics, professors, other authors and translators discourses, as well as the role of the publishing houses and patronage, among other factors, in the respective contexts will be brought to light. Moreover, an analysis of the paratexts and the textual resources relative to Amada s editions will be proposed, considering the relationships among literature, language and ethnic-racial issues.

The aim of this study was to investigate the strategies used to transfer aspects of culture in the translation of an English novel into Zulu. For this purpose, C.L. S. Nyembezi' s Zulu translation, Lafa Elihle Kakhulu ([1957] 1983), and Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country ([ 1948] 1966) were used. In the study a cultural model for translation, used within the descriptive translation studies paradigm, was adopted in order to conduct a comparative analysis of proper names, terms of address, idiomatic expressions, figurative speech and aspects of contemporary life. It was found that Nyembezi mainly used cultural substitution, transference, domestication, addition and omission as translation strategies. The findings also showed that in resorting to these strategies certain rnicrotextual shifts resulted in macrotextual modifications of the translated novel as a whole. The macrotextual elements of the translated text most affected by microtextual shifts are characterisation and focalisation which, in turn, influence style and theme. / African Languages / M.A. (African Languages)

This study focuses on how the heritage of slavery has affected the mothering of two mothers in Toni Morrison's novels Sula and Beloved and how this is portrayed in the novels. It has made a comparison between the mothers and many similarities are found in the lives of these women although they live in different time periods. The essay also elucidates aspects of power and powerlessness as well as the consequences of motherlove.

The purpose with this essay is to show how the protagonist in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved can be regarded as a traditional gothic heroine. Yet, she is given different roles and actions than a conventional gothic heroine. It is also argued in this essay that Morrison's heroine is given different qualities in order to reveal important messages. First, a short description of the plot is made in order to show the gothic elements in the novel. In the following, Sethe is dealt with in relation to four traditional gothic elements. These four all appear in the novel. These are: The heroine, the villain, the setting with the haunted house and the supernatural force. Then, Sethe as a different gothic heroine is analysed. Finally, Morrison's messages are brought up.

Informed by archival data and oral history interviews, this dissertation explored stories of the lived experiences of the stakeholders of Mercer University’s Beloved Community. The goal was to gain insight into how higher educational institutions (HEIs) engaged community partners to address long-term racial injury through the process of racial reconciliation. This study included the insights of 18 participants in a racial reconciliation project named the Beloved Community; which began in 2005 and was sponsored by Mercer University, a private higher educational institution; formerly affiliated with the Georgia Baptist Convention. An aim of the project was to sustain a frank discourse within a safe, public forum, that would address the present and past injuries of racial segregation at the local church level and include the injured in problem solving. Mercer is one of few formerly segregated southern universities engaged in such an endeavor. The research questions were: 1) What do Mercer University’s Beloved Community stakeholders perceive as the primary goals of higher educational institutions in addressing racial reconciliation? 2) What are Mercer University’s Beloved Community stakeholders’ perceptions and lived experiences of racial reconciliation, through this project? 3) What patterns and contradictions are there in the stakeholders’ stories about their perceptions and lived experiences of racial reconciliation? The findings validate the research of Androff (2012) that reconciliation is a slow process, occurring at multiple levels, and provides insights into such an endeavor at a local level. Further, this study found that enactment of the project is influenced by social identity, collective memory, and intergroup interaction. A culture of social reconciliation, in the form of building interpersonal relationships and creating forums for racial dialogue, was the dominant form of reconciliation found within Mercer’s Beloved Community. This study is significant in examining the role of HEIs who include community partners to extend sustained scholarship, learning, and civic engagement.

No abstract available / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Music / unrestricted

The purpose of this thesis was to contribute to a dialogue that considers the relationship between history, literature, and empathy as a literary affect. Specifically, I explored sites of literature’s transformative potential as it relates to cultural studies and the ethics of deconstruction. Via a deconstructive, post-colonial reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I considered how subjects in our current socio-political moment can feel history. Emerging from a post-structurally mediated engagement with history, signification, and feeling, I argued that empathy, as it is contentiously presented in the context of deconstruction, is not necessarily a reductive or essentialist approach towards relating or “being-with” an-other. Instead, I proposed that the act of reading historiographical novels that take constructions of the Atlantic Slave Trade to task might generate an affective empathy, which could in turn engender a more empathetic relationality and way of being-in-the-world.

No description available.