美国黑人作家-Toni-Morrison

1、Outline Part I. BiographyPart II. Major Works and Awards Part IV. A Brief Analysis of Beloved Part III. Writing FeaturesToni Morrisonborn February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohiograndfather was born a slave her family lost their land and were forced to work in the mines and mills of the industrialized Nort

2、h1949-1955attended Howard University in 1949received a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) In English from Howard in 1953earned a Master of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1955 became an English instructor at Texas Southern University after graduation in 1955. returned to Howard to teach English in 1957.

3、 became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.（妇女联谊会）1955-1957 got married in 1958 got divorced in 1964 and moved to New York, working as an editor. began her writing career.1964-a turning point of Morrison In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. “Toni Morrison, who in novels c

4、haracterized by visionary force and poetic inport, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”1993 The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture. “Time, it seems, has no future.” be honored with the 1996 National Book Foundations Medal of Distingui

5、shed Contribution to American Letters.1996 In 1984, she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair. From 19892006, she held the Rober F.Goheen Chair at Princeton University. In June 2005, she was awarded as an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.Later LifePart II. Major Novels and AwardsNovels1970 Th

6、e Bluest Eye 最蓝的眼睛 1973 Sula 秀拉1977 Song of Solomon 所罗门之歌 1981 Tar Baby 柏油孩子、黑宝贝 1988 Beloved 宠儿 1992 Jazz 爵士乐 1993 Love 爱 1999 Paradise天堂、乐园2008 A Mercy恩惠 The Bluest Eye A novel based on elements of Morrisons own experience, contrasts two black families: the dysfunctional(不正常的) breed loves and the

7、healthy, loving McTeers. Sula Sula portrays two black women who choose different paths in life.Song of SolomonFlight as a Means of EscapeAbandoned WomenThe Alienating Effects of RacismTar Baby A novel about contentions and conflicts based on learned biases and prejudices. These biases exist on a rac

8、e level, gender level, and a class level. Beloved Morrisons best novel and won her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction（ 普利策小说奖）.Awards 1977 National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon 1977 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award 1987-88 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award 1988 Americ

9、an Book Award for Beloved 1988 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations for Beloved 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved 1989 MLA Commonwealth Award in Literature1993 Nobel Prize for Literature 1993 Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris 1994 Condorcet Medal, Paris 1994 Pearl Buck Award

10、Awards1994 Rhegium Julii Prize for Literature 1996 Jefferson Lecture 1996 National Book Foundations Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters 2000 National Humanities Medal UUA:Frederic G. Melcher Book AwardAwardsPart III. Writing features 1. Powerful fictional style 2. Provocative the

11、mes 3. Sophisticated narrative techniques 4. Poetic styleWriting features1.Powerful fictional style In beloved, Paul D, fellow slave from Kentucky comes to live with them. She eventually takes over the household, feeding on Sethes memories and explanations to gain strength. Beloved nearly destroyed

12、her mother until the community of former slave women who have ostracized Sethe and Denver since the murder join together to exorcise Beloved at last. Writing features2. Provocative themesA. Strong feeling of feminist consciousness and nationalism. eg, the bluest eye Sula BelovedB. Describe mainly th

13、e impression of black women who are oppressed by race and gender. eg, the protagonist of beloved Sethe Writing features In her novel the bluest eye and Sula, Morrison expesses his strong feeling of feminist consciousness and nationalism; meanwhile, its also reveal the distort character of black peop

14、le, for example, Pecola in the bluest eye surmised that the reason she was abused at home and ridiculed at school was her black skin, which was equated with ugliness. She imagined that everything would be all right if she had blue eyes and blond hair.Writing featuresC. Integrate the past and present

15、 life of African Amricans to show the distort of colonial system, racial discrimination and dissemination of black peoples life. D. appeal to find the lost culture and rebulid the nationalism.Writing features In sula,she is the pariah of her hometown With the discovery at the age of 12 that she and

16、her friend Nel Wright were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, life evolved into an unlimited experiment. Not bound by any social codes, Sula was first thought to be unusual, then outrageous, and eventually evil Writing features In song of solomon, Morriso

17、n expresses her nationalism .The Milkmans Macon odyssey became a kind of cultural epic for all African-American people; it mapped in symbolic fashion the heritage of a people, from a mythic African past, through a heritage obscured by slavery, to a present built upon questioned values. Part IV. A Br

18、ief Analysis of BelovedBackgroundCharacters and PlotThemesWriting TechniquesBelovedArchetype: the true story of Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave, from The Black Book （ 黑人之书 ）.History: Beloved straddles (游离) the line between fiction and history; from an experience of a single family, she creates a p

19、owerful commentary on the psychological and historical legacy of slavery.Style: affected by such modernist masters as Faulkner or Joyce.BackgroundThe story set in Cincinnati around the Reconstruction period. (战后恢复时期) Beloved is powerful book about the evil of slavery and the value of freedom. The tr

20、agic story is told in a series of flashbacks.Sethe, the protagonist, was once a slave in Kentucky before the Civil War. Main Characters 1.Sethe(塞丝) the protagonist of Beloved, a proud and independent woman who is extremely devoted to her children and attempts to murder them in an act of motherly lov

21、e and protection.Main Characters 2.Denver(丹芙) Sethes youngest child, the dynamic character in the novel. She overcomes her fear of the world and starts to fight for independence and self-possession .Main Characters 3. Paul D (保罗.D) A former slave from Sweet Home who survived the horrors of slavery a

22、nd has evolved into a resourceful, contemplative man. He challenges Sethe to try to make a future with him. Main Characters4. Baby Suggs (贝比.萨格斯） Sethes mother-in-law. Baby becomes a preacher after Halle buys her freedom, and she provides a stabilizing force for Sethe and Denver.Main Characters 5.Be

23、loved(宠儿) Sethes third child and oldest daughter who was killed at the age of two. Her restless spirit haunts the family first as a ghost and then as a flesh-and-blood woman. Beloved was inspired by the true story of a black American slave woman, Margaret Garner. She escaped with her husband Robert

24、from a Kentucky plantation, and sought fringe in Ohio. When the slave masters overcame them，she killed her baby in order to save the child from the slavery she had managed to escape. She worked for Garner on a farm called Sweet Home. Garner was comparatively kind to his slaves. From him, Hall Suggs,

25、 one of the slaves, had bought freedom for his mother, Baby Suggs. She then moved to Cincinnati. Hall Suggs later became the husband of Sethe. After Garner died, a cruel man, known as schoolteacher, became the owner of the farm. The slaves, including Hall, were forced to flee but were either killed

26、in the fighting or disappeared. Halls wife Sethe and her children escaped to Cincinnati. Seeing her former owner coming to claim them and return them to slavery, Sethe tried to murder all of them, but without success. She succeeded, however, in killing the two-year-old daughter. The infant child was

27、 buried, having one word on her tombstone, “Beloved”.Many years have passed. Now Sethes life is marked with sadness, isolation and hopelessness. She works in a restaurant and lives a lonely life with her daughter, Denver, in the house of Baby Suggs. Sethes two sons have left her. She is haunted by t

28、he ghost of the murdered daughter. The ghost is exorcised (妖魔被驱走)with the appearance (出现之后) of Paul D., a fugitive (逃亡的) slave whom she knew. A few days later, however, the ghost reappears as a young woman, calling herself Beloved. Sethe is tormented by the horror of what she had done eighteen years

29、 ago to the child and by other memories of slavery. After Paul D. is told of the past event and the true status of the present ghost in bodily form, he is so startled that he leaves Sethe.Seethe lives together with both Denver and Beloved, who gets more and more selfish. Time passes and Paul D. is s

30、educed by （受诱惑）Beloved, who becomes very violent. Denver leaves the house. Sethe is found at the farm, with the naked body of a very pregnant Beloved. Sethe is finally able to face her past and learns to live. She is no longer cold-shouldered by the community as she was before. At the end of the nov

31、el, Sethe and Paul D. have come together. The spell breaks and Beloved has disappeared. Depicting the tragic life story of Sethe and her family, Beloved centers on the inescapable and devastating legacy of slavery. The legacies (遗留物) of slavery are viewed as a haunting force that tortures the enslav

32、ed blacks both physically and spiritually. The slaves in the novel are deprived of their ancestors, parents, mates, and children. They have no right to love and get married. They are deprived of their dignity, selfhood, freedom, and identity. By killing her child rather than let her be kidnapped int

33、o slavery, Sethe has suggested that slavery is more horrible than death. To die is better than to live as a slave, and freedom is more precious than life. Though Sethe has run away from her former master, she cannot rid herself of her painful recollections. She is forced to live with her sense of guilt and her past memories of slavery. By learning to accept, to love, and to overcome the past, she finally learns to live and survive. For this she has paid a dear price.Major themes Identity MotherhoodHisto