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.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2001. / Available in film copy from University Microfilms International. Vita. Thesis advisor: Lewis R. Gordon. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 242-266). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 239-246). Also available online through Digital Dissertations.

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

Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye from 1970, shows how the upbringing and society's norms can affect a young girl in an African-American society, where racism and a feeling of inferiority is the standards. Pecola's wishes for blue eyes since that may make her part of a world where she has never belonged. Her wish is not only a futile attempt to be looking differently but also a wish for a better life.

No description available.