Title Toni Morrison and the classical tradition : transforming American culture / Tessa Roynon

Edition First edition Published Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 220 pages) Series Classical presences Classical presences. Contents Introduction -- Discovery, conquest, and settlement -- The New England colonies and the founding of the New Nation -- Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction -- In search of home: the 1920s-1950s -- Fighting for rights: from Emmett Till's murder to the Ronald Reagan years -- America, Africa, and classical traditions -- Conclusion: splitting open the world Summary This book explores Toni Morrison's widespread engagement with ancient Greek and the Roman tradition. It examines the ways in which classical myth, literature, history, social practice, and religious ritual make their presence felt in all ten of Morrison's novels published to date. Combining close readings with theoretical discussion, it argues that Morrison's classical allusiveness is characterized by a strategic ambivalence. It demonstrates that Morrison's classicism is fundamental to the transformative critique of American history and culture that her work effects: the novelist deploys the classical tradition to rewrite narratives about America's discovery and colonization, about the founding of the new nation, about slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, about black migration and urbanization, and about segregation and the Civil Rights Movement. The volume positions Morrison within a genealogy of intellectuals who have challenged the purported conservative nature of Greek and Roman tradition, and who have revealed its construction as a ‘white’, pure, and purifying force to be a fabrication of the Enlightenment. Exploring the ways Morrison's dialogue with Homer, Aeschylus, Euripides, Virgil, and Ovid relates to her simultaneous dialogue with a diverse range of American literary forebears such as Cotton Mather, Willa Cather, Pauline Hopkins, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and William Faulkner, this book shows that Morrison's classicism enables her to fulfil her own imperative that ‘the past has to be revised’ Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Morrison, Toni -- Themes, motives Morrison, Toni -- Criticism and interpretation SUBJECT Morrison, Toni fast Subject Classicism in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. Classicism in literature Themes, motives Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780191501678 0191501670

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