This thesis focuses on a study of the female voice and silencing as well as on the use of the supernatural in selected works of literature from three different cultures: Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Toni Morrison's Beloved.

<p>This dissertation explores the philosophical, cultural, and political implications of the discourse on humanity and human subjectivity in the time of the Anthropocene that engages a wide geographic and temporal range. Specifically, I examine the ways in which three selected literary works of Daniel Defoe from England, Toni Morrison from America, and Arundhati Roy from India interact with the intricately contested notions of what it means to be a human being sharing the earth’s natural habitats with another entity traditionally defined as “other,” categorized around species, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, class, and even religion.</p><p>I argue that Defoe’s <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, the allegedly first modern novel, inaugurates the reigning understanding of human being as <i>homo sapiens</i> represented by Crusoe’s rationalized humanity, the essential feature of which has come to engender a threatening condition both for the nonhuman and non-European world; that Morrison’s <i>Paradise</i> and Roy’s <i>The God of Small Things</i> each in their own way not only problematize and challenge the overall tenet of Defoe’s metaphysical rationality in Euro-American and Anglophone cultures, but also investigate a more secular and thereby alternative idea of human subjectivity as <i>homo ecologicus</i>, so as to either (re)construct or restore a vibrant and sustainable community based on a notion of human not as hierarchically superior to “other” entities, but more horizontally and inclusively situated within one larger common habitat called the planet Earth.</p><p>Postulating the conviction that one cannot fully understand the aforementioned alternative conceptualization of human being as <i>homo ecologicus</i> within the confines of divisive identity politics based upon racial, ethnic, national, religious, gender, and sexual orientation categories, it is a pivotal concern of my thesis to bridge the ostensibly unquestioned bifurcation between human beings and Nature: that between the West and the East, that between male and female, that between reason and intuition, and that between knowledge and life. In performing these wider ecological inquiries into radical modes of human existence, I place the core value of nonfoundationalist thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Edward Said, among many others, in critical dialogue with the study of literature with a view to thematizing the broader question of how a literary narrative as a historical and cultural institution imaginatively reframes our self-consciousness of the precarious condition of the Anthropocene. In conclusion, I argue that the study of literature and other humanities that valorize a vital interconnectedness between humans, objects, and the environment offers the potential for an inexhaustible and enduring habitat in which <i>homo ecologicus</i> continues to, in the words of Nietzsche, “remain faithful to the earth,” embracing <i>homo sapiens</i>.</p>

This study employs psychoanalytical theories to explore how the conscious, unconscious, and subconscious workings of the mind, combined with a search for identity, are presented and dealt with in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (1987). It is done through a close reading and in-depth textual analysis of thematic concerns raised in the work. Previous research has primarily relied on some specific aspects of psychoanalytic theory and applied it to Beloved. The theoretical framework provides a rationale for this paper to research two events in particular that highlight the mother-daughter relationships between Sethe and her Ma’am and between Sethe and her daughter Beloved. These relationships are consequently analyzed by employing psychoanalytical concepts offered by Freud, Lacan and Kristeva. By utilizing psychoanalytical criticism, the characters’ conscious and unconscious motives and feelings are revealed and explained, as well as the meanings and the undercurrents that lie underneath the text’s consciousness. The results suggest that Sethe murdered her daughter Beloved to keep her from becoming a slave and enduring the dreadful and traumatic consequences of slavery, which was similar to what Sethe went through when she was abandoned by her Ma'am. Sethe’s childhood psychological principles and trauma shaped her identity as a mother as she witnessed her mother abandoning her at a young age by being tortured and killed. The events around Sethe’s mother’s death and the fact that Sethe never identifies her mother’s dead body, scar Sethe for life and instill in Sethe a sense of “lack” and an abnormal feeling of maternal love where she is ready to kill her children to save them from the horror of slavery.

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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Detta examensarbete är indelat i tre delar. Examensarbetet består av en översättning av tre kapitel ur Etta James självbiografi Rage to survive: the Etta James story skriven av James och spökförfattaren David Ritz, samt ett kapitel om vilka textspecifika översättningsproblem som uppstod vid översättningen. Den tredje delen består av en djupanalys av hur varieteten African-American English (AAE) översatts i två andra verk, nämligen I know why the caged bird sings av Maya Angelou och The bluest eye av Toni Morrison där översättningarna av dessa verk jämförs med min översättning av Rage to survive: the Etta James story. Djupanalysens syfte är att undersöka hur många talspråksmarkörer som finns i de ovannämnda verken, samt hur många av dessa markörer är specifika för AAE. Dessutom används Englund Dimitrovas varietetsskala (2001). Detta för att undersöka huruvida måltexterna ligger på skalan i relation till källtexterna genom mängden talspråksmarkörer. Översättningen genomfördes med målet att ligga så nära källtextens stil som var möjligt med hänsyn till målspråkets grammatiska regler och förutsättningar. Detta för att kunna erbjuda den målspråklige läsaren en likvärdig effekt som läsaren av källtexten. För att uppfylla detta mål fick en del kompromisser göras. / This thesis is divided into three main parts. It consists of a translation of three chapters from Etta James’ autobiography named Rage to survive: the Etta James story, written by James herself and ghost writer David Ritz. The thesis also features a part involving the issues that arose when I translated Rage to survive: the Etta James story and how I solved these issues. The third and final part consists of an analysis of how African-American English (AAE) has been translated in two other novels in the past, namely I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison’s The bluest eye. I compare the translations of these two novels with my own translation of Rage to survive: the Etta James story in the analysis where I strive to gain insight into the norms for translating spoken varieties. The translation was carried out with the purpose of maintaining the stylistic and informal markers as intact as possible while at the same time adhering to the grammatical prerequisites of the target language (Swedish). / <p>Översättningen är borttagen ur den publicerade versionen i fulltext i DiVA (denna version) på grund av upphovsrätten.</p><p>The translation has been removed from the published version of the essay in DiVA due to copyright.</p>

Toni Morrison reinterprets and reconstitutes American history by placing the lives, stories and experiences of African Americans in a position of centrality, while relegating white American history and cultural traditions to the margins of her narratives. She rewrites American history from an alternative - African American woman's - perspective, and subverts the accepted racist and patriarchally inspired `truths' about life, love and women's experiences through her sympathetic depiction of murderous mother love and complex female relationships in Beloved. She writes about oppression, pain and suffering, and of the need for the acknowledgement and alleviation of the various forms of oppression that scar human existence. Morrison's engagement with healing in Beloved forms the central focus of this short dissertation. The novel is analysed in relation to Mary Douglas's `Two Bodies' theory, John Caputo's ideas on progressive Foucaultian hermeneutics and healing gestures, and Julia Martin's thoughts on alternative healing practices based on non-dualism and interconnectedness. Within this interdisciplinary context, Beloved is read as a `small start' to `creative engagement' with alternative healing practices (Martin, 1996:104). / English / M.A. (English)

《寵兒》（Beloved, 1987）是美國作家童妮‧摩里森（Toni Morrison）的第五本小說。如同她的前四本小說，《寵兒》關注的主題是黑人族群生活在美國所面臨的困境，探討非裔美國人如何在種族歧視的壓迫下求生存。與前四本小說不同的是，《寵兒》所敘述的故事發生在奴隸制度廢除之際，是摩里森第一次直接處理黑人在奴隸制度中遭受虐待的歷史事實。《寵兒》的主角是一群被解放的黑奴，摩里森藉著他們對過去的回憶來訴說奴隸制度對黑人族群所造成的集體創傷。受創的角色活在有關創傷的回憶中。他們不願去回想痛苦的過去，卻又被揮之不去的創傷記憶所纏繞。他們試著彼此扶持，並企圖走出受創的陰霾，找尋一個新的生活。 《寵兒》的故事以女主角柴特（Sethe）弒嬰的秘密為中心，加上其他黑奴的創傷記憶編織而成。既然小說本身是一個有關創傷的故事，批評家對《寵兒》的研究也就常涉及小說中的記憶、創傷與敘事風格。不過這些有關記憶、創傷與敘事的討論總是以種族或性別等議題為出發點，很少批評家純粹分析記憶、創傷與敘事在《寵兒》中的互動關係。有別於以往的研究，本論文試著以「創傷敘述」（trauma narrative）為主軸，採用佛洛伊德（Sigmund Freud）與赫曼（Judith Herman）的創傷理論來分析《寵兒》中記憶、創傷與敘事如何互相影響。首先，本論文探討創傷如何影響記憶的形成與敘事，以及創傷記憶為何是「一個不可說的故事」（an unspeakable story）。其次，本論文將創傷敘述的特色與《寵兒》中複雜難解的敘事風格相比較，討論摩里森如何運用創傷敘述的特色來再現小說中主角們難以啟齒的創傷記憶。最後，本論文討論創傷敘述與創傷治療（trauma healing）之間的關係，說明創傷敘述如何成為創傷治療過程中不可或缺的一環。 / Beloved (1987) is Toni Morrison’s fifth novel. Like her first four novels, Beloved centers on the social injustice which the black people are confronted with in their lives, depicting how African Americans struggle to survive under the oppression of racism. What renders Beloved different is its subject—the history of slavery, which was never dealt with in Morrison’s novels. The main characters in Beloved are ex-slaves who have undergone the atrocities of slavery. By recounting the characters’ experiences, the novel represents the horrors of slavery and the atrocities traumatizing the black people. In their post-traumatic lives, the characters are trapped in their traumatic memory. Although they show reluctance to recall the painful past, the traumatized characters are haunted by their indelible memories. However, the story is not completely tragic since, in the end, the characters are not defeated by their trauma. They endeavor to support each other, trying to rid themselves of traumatic memory and to rebuild a new life. The story of Beloved, which revolves around Sethe’s secret of infanticide, is constructed from the characters’ traumatic memory. Since the story is closely related to trauma, most critics explore Beloved in terms of memory, trauma, and its narrative style. However, critics often discuss only one or two topics of the above three. There are some critics analyzing the interrelation of memory, trauma and narrative in Beloved but their discussions are often the portions pertaining to the more extensive explorations based on the topic of history, race, or gender. Differing from these critical approaches, the present thesis adopts the concept of trauma narrative, using Sigmund Freud and Judith Herman’s trauma theories to analyze the interplay of trauma, memory, and narrative in Beloved. Firstly, the thesis discusses how the traumatic event affects the formation and narration of memory. The discussion also demonstrates why the traumatic memory is “an unspeakable story.” Secondly, the thesis compares the characteristics of trauma narrative with the intricate narrative of Beloved. The discussion centers on how Morrison adopts the characteristic of trauma narrative to represent a story of trauma. Lastly, the thesis explores the interrelation between trauma narrative and trauma healing. The discussion intends to clarify how trauma narrative becomes a prerequisite for trauma healing.

Ecocritical theology relates to American fiction as it connects nature and spirituality. In my development of the term “neo-pastoral” I begin with Virgil’s Eclogues to serve as examples for spiritual and nature related themes. Virgil’s characters in “The Dispossessed” represent people’s alienation from the land. Meliboeus must leave his homeland because the Roman government has reassigned it to their war veterans. As he leaves Meliboeus wonders why fate has rendered this judgment on him and yet has granted his friend Tityrus a reprieve. Typically, pastoral literature represents people’s longing to leave the city and return to the spiritual respite of the country. When Meliboeus begins his journey he does not travel toward a specific geographical location. Because the gods have forced him from his land and severed his spiritual connection to nature he travels into the unknown. This is the starting point from which I develop neo-pastoral threads in contemporary literature and discuss the alienation that people experience when they are no longer connected to a spirit of the land or genius loci. Neo-pastoralism relates Bakhtin’s idea of chronotope and the expansion of the narrative voice of the novel to include the time/space dialogic. Neo-pastoral fiction shows people in their quest to find spirituality in spite of damage from chemical catastrophic events and suggests they may turn to technology as an ideological base to replace religion. The (anti) heroes of this genre often feel no connection with Judeo-Christian canon yet they do not consider other models of spirituality. Through catastrophes related to the atomic bomb, nuclear waste accidents, and the realization of how chemical pollutants affect the atmosphere, neo-pastoral literature explores the idea of apocalypticism in the event of mass annihilation and the need for canonical reformation. The novels explored in this dissertation are John Updike’s Rabbit, Run; Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49; Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Don DeLillo’s White Noise; Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead; Toni Morrison’s Paradise; and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

This dissertation explores the reoccurrence of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein within twentieth-century American novels. While the inaccurate 1931 film version by James Whale remains the best known adaptation of Frankenstein, I argue that Willa Cather, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Chuck Palahniuk return to Shelley’s 1818 novel to critique racist and misogynistic responses to anxieties about gender and racial power in the age of industrial consumer culture. In doing so, I extend existing scholarship on the American Gothic to demonstrate that The Professor’s House, Invisible Man, Beloved, and Fight Club represent a specifically Shelleyan Gothic tradition in twentieth-century American literature. My project draws upon influential feminist and postcolonial readings of Frankenstein and on the theoretical work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and later critics who have developed her theory to show how the twentieth-century novels echo themes and motifs from Shelley’s novel to critique the destructive effects of male homosociality. Each novel contains a protagonist that resembles Victor Frankenstein and responds to historically specific anxieties about gender, race, and industrial technoscience by creating a doppelgänger who enables participation in a homosocial bond that is initially empowering but proves destructive to women, racial minorities, and eventually the creature and creator figures themselves. My reading reveals unexpected similarities between Cather’s The Professor’s House and Palahniuk’s Fight Club. Cather’s novel appears to glorify Tom Outland as the ideal masculine hero but ultimately reveals him to be a monstrous doppelgänger who acts out the Professor’s oppressive impulses; similarly, Fight Club seems to romanticize the male violence instigated by the doppelgänger figure Tyler Durden but actually echoes Shelley’s critique of male homosociality as monstrous. My reading also reveals previously overlooked similarities between Invisible Man and Beloved, both of which feature a black protagonist who surprisingly resembles Victor Frankenstein by creating a doppelgänger to challenge his or her disempowerment by the structures of white male homosociality but end up emulating the destructive homosocial structures they critique. My dissertation shows how all of these writers share Shelley’s critique yet move beyond it by offering alternatives to the destructive cycle of violence, embodied in each case by a female figure who resists or reclaims the position of the abject other in the homosocial triangle.