Throughout their respective bodies of work, both Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor invoke recurring images of the mirror and the mirror-gazing act. Because of the preponderance of these images and because of how they inform our deeper understanding of character, theme, and genre, I argue that these images constitute an important trope in Morrison and Naylor\'s fiction. Although the mirror trope pervades both writers\' bodies of work, it has not garnered significant scholarly attention, particularly with respect to the ways in which the trope highlights an intertextual dialogue between two essential writers of the 20th century American narrative. In this project, then, I conduct an in-depth but by no means exhaustive exploration into the mirror trope. I am specifically concerned with how each writer brings this trope to bear on issues of representation, the politics of recognition, and the dilemma of black female subjectivity and agency in a racist and misogynistic American society. I argue, then, that because the mirror trope is where patriarchal and racist structures of power collide, it signifies a critical point of intersectionality between race and gender. For that reason, the mirror emerges as a space of contestation within these narratives. / Master of Arts

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Secrets and silence appear frequently in the work of Toni Morrison. In three novels, The Bluest Eye, Jazz, and Paradise, she repeats a specific phrase that acts as a signal to the reader. Morrison three times writes, “Quiet as it’s kept” in her novels to alert readers to the particular significance secrets and silence play in these novels. Morrison portrays this secrecy and silence as a barrier to building strong communities and even a strong self-identity. While the phrase appears in the same form, with each subsequent appearance, Morrison takes the idea a step further. In each novel she demonstrates how breaking the silence and refusing to keep quiet is an act of healing or salvation and she expands this healing to be increasingly inclusive. What begins as a single voice breaking the silence in The Bluest Eye becomes a group of people sharing their secrets in Jazz, and finally an entire town coming to terms with the power of speaking up. This thesis looks at the secrets and their impact on characters in each novel and explores the progression of the power in refusing to keep quiet.

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Fluvial systems and their associated deposits host globally important mineral deposits, water reserves and hydrocarbons. Crucial to the extraction of these resources is an understanding of heterogeneity distribution within deposits of fluvial systems. To constrain and predict heterogeneity distribution within fluvial deposits, outcrop data together with lidar and drone derived virtual outcrop models have been collected from the Salt Wash Distributive Fluvial System (DFS) in Utah and Colorado. The study records an analysis of sedimentary architecture, facies distribution and intra-channel heterogeneity of five study sites within the proximal, medial and distal reaches of the Salt Wash DFS. Specifically the fluvial style, lateral variability of fluvial architecture, intrachannel and overbank ratio, grainsize, channel body and storey width:thickness ratios and intrachannel heterolthics at outcrops considered representative of the proximal, medial and distal portions of a DFS have been documented. Data from the study sites have been used to generate 3D reservoir models. The models have been subject to flow simulation to better understand the significance of hetergenity variability within fluvial reservoirs at an 'inter-well' scale (approximatley 0.1 km2). An indepth workflow and methodology for measuring and describing DFS channel bodies and for the construction of a reservior flow simulation model from outcrop derived data are presented here. Data collection has involved mapping and measuring; palaeocurrents, barscale accretion surfaces, storey dimensions, channel body dimensions, facies and intrachannel heterolithics. Results show clear trends within channel channel bodies and associated deposits such as, intra channel heterogenity channel body percentage, channel body grain size, storey/channel body width thickness; which can be predicted within a distributive fluvial system context, ultimately leading to better subsurface interpretation with smaller datasets. This field based study of the Salt Wash DFS, coupled with virtual outcrop models has provided a quantitive analys's of channel body architectures and facies distributions. Additionally, field work conducted on point bar deposits now illustrates the limitations of 2D outcrops when attempting to describe meandering or braided fluvial deposits and why this may have resulted in gross underestimation of meanderbelt deposits in the fluvial rock record.

Thesis (M.C.S.)--Regent College, 2005. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-118).

<p>The intention with this essay is to examine the symbolic meaning of trees in Toni Morrison’s <em>Beloved</em>. Trees are repeatedly mentioned throughout the novel and in this essay the trees are claimed to carry various meanings. A main usage of tree imagery is argued to be in connection to the life and death struggles of the main characters. The relation between tree imagery and slavery, and the effects of this relation, is also analysed.</p>

The intention with this essay is to examine the symbolic meaning of trees in Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Trees are repeatedly mentioned throughout the novel and in this essay the trees are claimed to carry various meanings. A main usage of tree imagery is argued to be in connection to the life and death struggles of the main characters. The relation between tree imagery and slavery, and the effects of this relation, is also analysed.

From fourteenth century medieval literature to contemporary American and African American literature, researchers have singled out and analyzed writing from every genre that is prophetic in nature, predicting or warning about events, both revolutionary and dire, to come. One twentieth-century American whose work embodies the essence of warning and foretelling through history-laden literature is Toni Morrison. This modern-day literary prophet reinterprets eras gone by through what she calls “re-memory” in order to guide her readers, and her society, to a greater understanding of the consequences of slavery and racism in America and to prompt both races to escape the pernicious effects of this heritage. Several critics have recognized and written about Morrison’s unique style of prophetic prose. These critics, however, have either taken a general cursory analysis of her complete body of works or they are only focused on one of her texts as a site of evidence. Despite the many critical essays and journal articles that have been written about Morrison as literary prophet, no critic has extensively investigated Morrison’s major works by way of textual analysis under this subject, to discuss Morrison prophetic prose, her motivation for engaging in a form of prophetic writing, and the context of this writing in a wider general, as well as an African-American, tradition. This dissertation takes on a more comprehensive, cross-sectional analysis of her works that has been previously employed, concentrating on five of Morrison’s major novels: The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz and Paradise, in an order to assess how Morrison develops and infuses warnings and admonitions of biblical proportions. This investigation seeks to reveal Morrison’s motivation to prophecy to Americans, black and white, the context in which she engages with her historical and contemporary subjects, and the nature of the admonitions to present and future action she offers to what she sees as a contemporary generation of socially and historically oblivious African Americans, using literary prophecy as the tool by which to accomplish her objectives. This dissertation also demonstrates—by way of textual analysis and literary theory—the evolution through five novels of Morrison’s development as a literary prophet.

This dissertation aims to map the black female subject in Toni Morrison¡¦s six fictions¡XThe Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz¡Xby exploring the dialectic between space, which produces power, and the body, which receives or/and resists the power. Since subjectivity relies on the interrelationship among mentality, space, and social power, I use psycho-geopolitical viewpoints about space and the body, which combine Henri Lefebvre¡¦s psycho-spatial concept of ¡§abstract space¡¨ reigned by a logic of visualization and Nigel Thrift¡¦s theory of ¡§personality¡¨ and ¡§socialization¡¨ referring to the individual¡¦s constant negotiations with power relations within space. The introductory chapter presents the motivation of this study, the historical context of the fictions, literature reviews on relative issues, and finally the methodology and organization of the whole thesis. Chapter Two, by explaining the sites of power, the body as the site for articulating the power, and the ensuing strategies of resistance, elaborates how the subtitle of my dissertation¡Xspace, body, and resistance¡X would work in Morrison¡¦s works. Then in each following chapter, two novels would be discussed. In Chapter Three, ¡§Positionality and Self-Love in Beloved and Jazz,¡¨ I study how Lefebvrezian spatial abstractions, through slavery and capitalism, present black female characters a deprived or distorted mirror image and consequently deny or corrupt their positionality and self-love. They then undergo a series of Thriftian socialization by first internalizing the white discourse and the urban mores, then by unearthing and letting go the historical repressed, and finally by recovering their love for self and others in order to reconstruct their subjectivities. They thus gain a budding sense of self. In Chapter Four, ¡§The Failure of Subjectivity in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon,¡¨ I would examine, in terms of Lefebvre¡¦s ¡§visualization¡¨ within space, how the urban discourse in the Northern setting influences the reading of the body and subordinates the female youngsters to a capitalist and patriarchal hierarchy of power. Chapter Five, ¡§Subjectivity with-out the Community: Sula and The Tar Baby,¡¨ is an attempt to analyze the black female characters¡¦ subjectivity construction upon claiming difference from the community, which confronts spatial abstraction by the phallic power embodied in racial colonization, patriarchy, and capitalism. The heroines thus take marginality or shift locations through journeys as strategies for resistance. The final chapter is a conclusion of the whole thesis.