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Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Apotropaic Imagination investigates Toni Morrison's Beloved in light of ancient Greek influences, arguing that the African American experience depicted in the novel can be set in a broader context than is usually allowed. Kathleen Marks gives a history of the ...

Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Apotropaic Imagination investigates Toni Morrison's Beloved in light of ancient Greek influences, arguing that the African American experience depicted in the novel can be set in a broader context than is usually allowed. Kathleen Marks gives a history of the apotropaic from ancient to modern times, and shows the ways that Beloved's protagonist, Sethe, and her community, engage the apotropaic as a mode of dealing with their communal suffering.

Apotropaic, from the Greek, meaning "to turn away from" refers to rituals that were performed in ancient times to ward off evil deities. Modern scholars use the term to denote an action that, in attempting to prevent an evil, causes that very evil. Freud used the apotropaic to inform his thought concerning Medusa and the castration complex, and Derrida found the apotropaic's logic of self-sabotage consonant with his own thought.

Marks draws on this critical history and argues that Morrison's heroine's effort to keep the past at bay is apotropaic: gestures aimed at resisting a danger, a threat, an imperative. These gestures anticipate, mirror, and put into effect that which they seek to avoid -- one does what one finds horrible so as to mitigate its horror. In Beloved, Sethe's killing of her baby reveals this logic: she kills the baby in order to save it. Her action has ritualistic undertones that link it to the type of primal crimes that can bring relief not only to herself but also to a petrified community. As do all great heroes, Sethe transgresses boundaries, and such transgressions bring with them terrific dangers. It is through a series of these gestures that the heroine and the community resist whatMorrison calls "cultural amnesia" and engage in a shared past, inaugurating a new order of love.

Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Apotropaic Imagination is eclectic in its approach -- calling upon Greek religion, Greek mythology

Toni Morrison's "Beloved" is probably the most widely studied work of contemporary fiction, both in the United States and abroad. The novel appeals to readers across various disciplines; as such, it is now required reading in courses in English and American literature, feminist and multicultural ...

Toni Morrison's "Beloved" is probably the most widely studied work of contemporary fiction, both in the United States and abroad. The novel appeals to readers across various disciplines; as such, it is now required reading in courses in English and American literature, feminist and multicultural critiscism, and American history in universities and colleges around the world. The novel's universal appeal, with its unique structure and compelling story, has made it the subject of numerous scholarly essays published in reference journals. To make the best of these essays more accessible to university students, this book offers a volume of selected essays with a criticial introduction and annotated bibliography.

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, Toni Morrison is among our most distinguished contemporary novelists. Morrison describes herself as a "black woman novelist," and all her novels deal with African American characters and communities. Exploring the entire cycle of human life in a ...

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, Toni Morrison is among our most distinguished contemporary novelists. Morrison describes herself as a "black woman novelist," and all her novels deal with African American characters and communities. Exploring the entire cycle of human life in a spiritual context, her novels are also universal in their depiction of families, especially mothers and their children. From her first novel, The Bluest Eye, to her most recent, Paradise, Toni Morrison has explored the African American experience, and by extension, the human experience. The characters she creates linger in our minds long after we have finished reading the novel. This is the only book-length study of Morrison's novels to discuss all of her novels published to date.

Throughout human history, motherhood and maternal experience have been largely defined and written by a patriarchal culture. Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of male power have objectified the maternal and have disregarded female subjectivity. As a result, maternal ...

Throughout human history, motherhood and maternal experience have been largely defined and written by a patriarchal culture. Religion, art, medicine, psychoanalysis, and other bastions of male power have objectified the maternal and have disregarded female subjectivity. As a result, maternal perspectives have been ignored and the mother's voice silenced. In recent literary texts, however, more substantial attention has been given to motherhood and to the physical, psychological, social, and cultural dynamics affecting maternal experience. In Maternal Body and Voice in Toni Morrison, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Lee Smith, Paula Gallant Eckard examines how maternal experience is depicted in selected novels by three American writers, emphasizing how they focus on the body and the voice of the mother. These novels include: The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved by Morrison; In Country, Spence + Lila, and Feather Crowns by Mason; and Oral History, Fair and Tender Ladies, and Saving Grace by Smith.

By employingthis focus, these writers lessen the objectification the maternal has received and restore a rich subjectivity that foregrounds the mother's perspective. Moreover, their fiction reflects a deep concern for history and culture and for a woman's experience of her world. They challenge the traditional representations of black and white motherhood that have appeared in southern literature and society, rendering complex portrayals of motherhood that defy cultural stereotypes.

Eckard incorporates historical perspectives on African American and southern motherhood, utilizing the works of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Sally McMillen, Deborah White, Jacqueline Jones, and others. She draws upon the feministcriticism of Adrienne Rich, Elaine Showalter, Naomi Schor, Tillie Olsen, Karla F. C. Holloway, Barbara Christian, and others, and the linguistic and psychoanalytic theories of Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray.