Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-52).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 401-410). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 50-52). Also available in print.

The thesis, entitled The Pain, Hunger, and Birth of Epiphany in the Novels of Toni Morrison, is divided into three chapters. The introduction discusses some of the traditional uses of the word “epiphany” in literature and then proceeds to define the ways in which Morrison’s characters experience epiphanical journeys. Furthermore, Morrison’s development of the idea plays a fundamental role in the structure and unification of all of her novels. The first chapter compares the texts Love and Sula and charts the progression of pain from external, communal, and inherited to internal, individual, and isolationist. In both Love and Sula, death and the body are irrelevant, and it is only when characters learn to dispel pain and disregard the body that they can truly experience an epiphany. Chapter two discusses Paradise in detail and describes the role of food in allowing or preventing characters’ spiritual awakenings or transcendence. Food and the way it is consumed, prepared, grown, and perceived are inextricably linked to characters’ journeys to epiphany. The third chapter compares the novels Jazz and Song of Solomon and illustrates the ways in which perceptions of pain and food are translated to younger generations. It also raises questions of generational sterility and degeneration as well as conveys ideas of stunted or aborted growth and truncated epiphanies.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 51-55).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 51-55). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.A.I.S.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 70-76). Also available on the World Wide Web.

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

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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