Toni Morrison’s later novels Love and Home bring forth an issue of identity anxiety for those involved in the narrative: author, narrators, and readers. Featuring both first-person and third-person narrators, these works offer conflicting narratives in which the writer, Morrison, allows her characters to question her own authorial voice. Greater agency is given to the first-person narrators through which they deconstruct the traditional objectivity of third-person narratives. As such, this thesis argues, the structures of Love and Home extend their inside conversations to the real world of readers who must reconsider where their narrative trust has been. Moreover, Morrison’s challenge to her authorial voice becomes the means through which she questions the hegemony of U.S. historical narratives. In the end, it is the subjective voices of the first-person narrators which offer a more reliable, counter narrative of not only Morrison’s fictional stories, but that of the nation’s historical past. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Diese Arbeit schildert auf der Basis einer Analyse der intermedialen Struktur der Werke zweier Künstler aus unterschiedlichen Jahrhunderten die Transportierung eines mystischen Selbstverständnisses, das als Tiefenstruktur der zugrundeliegenden Werke ausgemacht wird. Deshalb sieht diese Arbeit beide Künstler als christliche Mystiker an, deren Weltbild keine grundlegenden Unterschiede aufweist. Darüberhinaus wird über diese beiden Autoren versucht die kontrovers diskutierte Aktualität von Mystik in der Gegenwart herauszustellen. Zentraler Teil und Ausgangspunkt der Ergebnisse ist hierbei die Analyse eines mystischen Wertesystems, das sich in den Prophecies von William Blake finden lässt und das sich in wesentlichen Punkten auf die Werke von Van Morrison übertragen lässt. / This work doesn't deal with two artists in the way that it compares their lyrics in an immanent way. Moreover, it tries to show that William Blake and Van Morrison use differnet means of art in order to express the same intention. That is mainly a mystic view of the world which is embodied in the heart of their work. Both artists regard art as a healing force. The central aspects are summarized in a chapter which deals thouroughly with a mystic system that William Blake developed in his prophecies that were not published throughout his life. Somehow, it can be called the religious centre of his work. Van Morrison obviously uses this system in some of his songs, too. So, that finally both artists are regarded as christian mystics. Consequently, the contemporary view of mystic has to be discussed.

<p>The purpose of this essay is to analyze how loss affects the identity of the main characters in Toni Morrison’s Sula. An examination of the African-American community in Sula reveals a history of collective loss, both material and non-material, which limits the identity formation of the individual. This burden challenges the protagonists of the novel, Sula and Nel, as they come of age in the 1920s and continues to trouble them throughout their lives. By first defining loss and identity and then examining how loss affects identity in the community, family and individual, this paper will argue that although loss can limit the individual, it can also act as a catalyst for personal growth. Furthermore, I will show that despite the fact that Sula and Nel react differently to loss they both gain a sense of selfhood in the end.</p>

Wayne Booth and other rhetorical critics have developed methods for examining the rhetorical aspects of fiction. In this dissertation, I examine, specifically, the use of rhetorical violence in American fiction. It is my premise that authors use rhetorical violence and the irrationality of violence created mimetically to construct ironic metaphors that comment on the irrationality of the ideology behind the violence, pushing that ideology's maxims to its logical ends. The goal of rhetorical violence, therefore, is to create the conditions for a transfer of culpability so that the act becomes transitive-transferable-loosed from its moorings. Culpability, if indeed it reflects something intrinsically awry with an ideology, becomes the fault of the ideology-€”it becomes the perpetrator of illogic and the condemnatory force associated with the act of violence gets transferred to it. Hence, if the author has created an effective metaphor, when he or she flips the violent scene'€™s "€œvalue," the audience is willing to follow along. The violence remains a great evil, but the culpability for the act is shifted to a representative of the ideology in question-as-victimizer; nonetheless, that transfer can only occur inasmuch as the audience is willing to force-fit the incongruities of the metaphor.I examine this rhetorical phenomenon in the works of three modern American writers: Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Chuck Palahniuk. I seek to examine the ideologies questioned in these works, the contradictory beliefs expressed by the authors, and to explicate primary episodes in the works of fiction wherein rhetorical violence functions in a rhetorical fashion to promulgate the author's ideology by emotionally jarring the reader loose from commonly-held ideological assumptions in three specific appeals: first, to negate one socially-held ideology in order to promote a conflicting one (Wise Blood); second, to elicit compassion for victimized characters representing social ills (Beloved); third, to call into question the validity of social institutions and practices (Fight Club).

University of Macau / Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities / Department of English

This paper deals with the novel Jazz, written by African-American writer Toni Morrison. The paper argues that the novel deconstructs itself. Also, it illustrates how the jazz music in the novel works as a deconstructing force on the characters and the narrative form. The essay begins with a chapter about deconstructive theory.  Next, there is a brief summary of jazz music – its history and features. Then, there is an analysis which focuses on how jazz music affects the characters. Last, the narrative form is investigated, for instance in terms of the narrator’s tendency to shift between various points of view. / Uppsatsen påbörjades vid Halmstad Högskola med Cecilia Björkén Nyberg som handledare, men slutfördes vid Växjö Universitet. Magisterexamen är sedan uttagen vid Högskolan i Halmstad.

Wayne Booth and other rhetorical critics have developed methods for examining the rhetorical aspects of fiction. In this dissertation, I examine, specifically, the use of rhetorical violence in American fiction. It is my premise that authors use rhetorical violence and the irrationality of violence created mimetically to construct ironic metaphors that comment on the irrationality of the ideology behind the violence, pushing that ideology's maxims to its logical ends. The goal of rhetorical violence, therefore, is to create the conditions for a transfer of culpability so that the act becomes transitive-transferable-loosed from its moorings. Culpability, if indeed it reflects something intrinsically awry with an ideology, becomes the fault of the ideology-€”it becomes the perpetrator of illogic and the condemnatory force associated with the act of violence gets transferred to it. Hence, if the author has created an effective metaphor, when he or she flips the violent scene'€™s "€œvalue," the audience is willing to follow along. The violence remains a great evil, but the culpability for the act is shifted to a representative of the ideology in question-as-victimizer; nonetheless, that transfer can only occur inasmuch as the audience is willing to force-fit the incongruities of the metaphor.I examine this rhetorical phenomenon in the works of three modern American writers: Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison, and Chuck Palahniuk. I seek to examine the ideologies questioned in these works, the contradictory beliefs expressed by the authors, and to explicate primary episodes in the works of fiction wherein rhetorical violence functions in a rhetorical fashion to promulgate the author's ideology by emotionally jarring the reader loose from commonly-held ideological assumptions in three specific appeals: first, to negate one socially-held ideology in order to promote a conflicting one (Wise Blood); second, to elicit compassion for victimized characters representing social ills (Beloved); third, to call into question the validity of social institutions and practices (Fight Club).

Diss. Ph. D.--English--Uppsala university, 2000. / Bibliogr. p. 243-253. Index.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 55-56).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 40-41).