文化回归与认同：非洲文化对莫里森文学创作影响毕业论文

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1、河南科技大学硕士学位论文文化回归与认同：非洲文化对莫里森文学创作的影响姓名：刘婷申请学位级别：硕士专业：英语语言文学指导教师：张发祥20091201摘 要论文题目： 文化回归与认同：非洲文化对莫里森文学创作的影响专业：英语语言文学研 究 生：指导教师：摘刘婷张发祥要文化回归和文化认同是全球化趋势下一种反叛现代社会的普遍反映。在过去的 20 世纪，西方文化寻根已发展成为波及最广泛的文化复兴思想运动，也催生了一批重要的文化成果。非洲作为人类文明的发源地之一，孕育了灿烂的古埃及文明和丰富的文化传统。但在当今世界里，白人文化占主导地位及少数裔民族文化逐渐被边缘化的现实引起了不少美国黑人作家认真严肃的思

2、考，促使他们为持民族历史和传统文化而积极创作。莫里森就是其中颇有建树的作家之一。对于中国读者来说，托妮莫里森（1931 -）已经不再是一个陌生的名字。自从她 1993年获得诺贝尔文学奖以来，她的作品尤其是其文学创作中蕴含的独特的非洲文化魅力已经引起国内外评论界的广泛注意。至今,莫里森已经创作了 9 部作品，这些作品为她赢得许多荣誉。作为非裔美国人，莫里森从创作伊始就把目光投向本民族的历史与现状，并从本民族的文化土壤中汲取了丰富的营养。其中非洲文化传统对其创作的影响是显而易见的。莫里森在创作过程中致力于保持和弘扬非洲黑人文化,其作品深深根植于美国黑人独特的历史传说和现实生活,始终以表现和探索黑人

3、的历史命运和精神世界为主题。莫里森一方面要挖掘那段谁都不愿提及的黑人历史，告诫人们正视过去，面对历史。另一方面，她积极探索和重构黑人民族文化和民族意识，弘扬黑人民族精神，在民族文化和精神中寻找真正的自我和身份。本文试图从其最具代表性的三篇小说秀拉，所罗门之歌和宠儿入手，结合历史的观点，通过文本分析及对渗透于该三篇小说中的根植于非洲大陆的黑人民间传说、神话、音乐等传统文化的分析，深入探讨灿烂的非洲文化对其文学创作的影响，充分挖掘莫里森潜意识里深厚的非洲文化之根的概念及其弘扬黑人文化精华和展现黑人文化之美，实现民族文化回归和认同的强烈民族自豪感。本文共分四章第一章：首先概括莫里森的生平及文学成就，

4、其次是国内外有关莫里森的研IMasters Thesis of Henan University of Science and Technology究现状。第二章：首先简单介绍秀拉，所罗门之歌和宠儿三部作品的主要故事情节。其次是非洲的传统文化的概述，主要是神话传说，音乐及命名三个方面。最后是这些文化传统在三部作品中的具体体现。第三章：是本篇论文的核心。通过莫里森作品中体现的丰富的非洲文化特色，分析非洲文化传统对莫里森文学创作的影响，具体归纳为三方面：首先，非洲文化为莫里森文学创作提供了丰富的素材；其次，使莫里森形成了独特的音乐叙事创作技巧；最后，激励莫里森形成民族文化回归和认同的创作理念。第四

5、章：为结论部分。通过分析我们可以看出，非洲文化遗产对莫里森文学创作的思路和理念产生了重要影响。通过她的文学作品，莫里森提出了对于非洲裔美国人摆脱文化身份困境的新的见解：实现文化回归与文化认同，以确立其在新世界中的身份并由此真正地融入现代社会。关 键 词：托尼莫里森, 非洲文化, 文学创作, 影响, 文化回归和认同论文类型：研究报告IIAbstractSubject:Cultural Return and Identification: The Impact of AfricanCulture on Toni Morrisons WorksSpecialty:Name:Supervisor:En

6、glish Language and LiteratureLiu TingZhang FaxiangAbstractCultural return and identification is a general response of rebelling modernsociety towards globalization. In the past 20 centuries, cultural root-seeking hasdeveloped into the most widely spread cultural renaissance movement, and thereforesp

7、awned a number of important cultural achievements. Africa, as one of the cradles ofhuman civilization, once gave birth to splendid Egyptian civilization and rich culturaltradition. However, in todays world, Afro-American culture is being marginalizedbecause of the dominant white culture. This trend

8、has aroused serious thinking inAfro-American writers and has strongly encouraged them to maintain national historyand traditional culture by literary creation. Morrison is one of these writers who haveachieved a lot. She devotes herself to maintaining and promoting black culture in herliterary creat

9、ion, making her works rooted so deeply in the unique African traditionalculture and real life of Afro-Americans. For Chinese readers, Toni Morrison (1931-) isno longer a strange name ever since she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.Her works, especially the unique cultural features of Afric

10、a implied in her literarycreation have attracted broad attention from critics at home and abroad. So far,Morrison has created nine novels, all of which are well-received by the public andhave won many honors.As an African American, Morrison put sights on her national history and currentstatus from t

11、he very beginning of her literary creation, and absorbed much fromAfrican traditional culture. It is obvious that African cultural tradition has producedgreat impact on her literary creation. In Morrisons novels, through depicting Africanmythology, folklore, music and so on, the author shows readers

12、 not only special charmof colorful African culture, but her deep concern and thinking on the future of Afro-Americans as well. She, on the one hand, tries to delve into the history of black people.On the other hand, she aims to not only explore and reconstruct black culture andIIIMasters Thesis of H

13、enan University of Science and Technologynational consciousness, but also carry forward the spirit of Black Nationalism, thusencouraging Afro-Americans to seek identity in national culture. Undoubtedly sheunderstands that only by rooting in the African traditional culture, can black peoplefind the t

14、rue identity.Actually, it is not very new to study Toni Morrison from a cultural point. But it isalso true that not too much attention is paid to the research from the angle of Africantradition as a whole on her three major works, especially the research about concreteinfluences of African culture o

15、n her literary creation. Therefore, this paper tempts tochallenge its difficulty and complexity. Through analyzing the text, this essay attemptsto offer a new angle to appreciate Morrisons three novels Sula, Song of Solomon,Beloved and enrich their textual meanings; to make readers have more thought

16、s andenlightenments of African cultures; to find out the concrete impact of African cultureon Morrisons literary creation; to emphasize the importance and necessity for thecontemporary African Americans to realize the importance of their traditional culturein order to help find their identity in a w

17、hitened world; to widen the view of theresearch on Morrison.This thesis consists of four chapters.Chapter 1 will first give a brief introduction about Toni Morrison and her literaryachievements, followed by relevant researches on Morrison at home and abroad.Chapter 2 will first make a brief review o

18、f Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved,then introduce African traditional culture, mostly about myth and legend, music andnaming, lastly followed by the specific embodiment of these cultural traditions in Sula,Song of Solomon and Beloved .Chapter 3 is the most important part in this thesis. It aims to

19、analyze the impact ofAfrican cultural tradition on Morrisons literary creation, which can be summarizedinto three aspects: firstly, African culture provides a wealth of materials to Morrisonsliterary creation; secondly, African culture promotes Morrison to form a uniquemusical narrative in her creat

20、ion; finally, African culture inspires Morrison to establishher literary creative belief of pursuing cultural return and cultural identification.Chapter 4 is conclusion. According to analysis, it is easy to conclude that Africancultural heritages have a strong impact on her literary creation and lit

21、erary philosophy.Through her works, Morrison proposes that realizing cultural return and identificationIVAbstractis the only way for African-Americans to escape from identity dilemma in order toestablish their identity in the new world.Key words: Toni Morrison, African culture, literary creation, im

22、pact, culturalreturn and identificationThesis type: research reportVChapter OneIntroductionChapter One Introduction1.1 A brief introduction of Toni MorrisonToni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931) is a NobelPrize-winning American author, editor and professor. She is considered

23、 to be one ofthe greatest contemporary novelists and the first African-American writer to be sohonored.1.1.1 Early lifeToni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, the second of four children in aworking-class family. Her parents moved to Ohio from the South to escape racism andto find better opportuniti

24、es in the North. As a child, Morrison read constantly and sheloved to read. Her early favorites were the Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoyevski,French author Gustave Flaubert and English novelist Jane Austen. At that timestorytelling (a method of later worked its way into Morrisons writings), is a

25、sharedactivity in her family. Her parents would spend hours telling them terrifying ghoststories, and the children were encouraged to participate in it. In terms of music, hermothers family were all musicians. Her grandfather was a violinist, her mother playedin silent-movie theaters and sang everyt

26、hing from opera to jazz. Throughout herchildhood, she absorbed a number of folktales, myths and songs that had beenimportant parts of African traditional culture for centuries.At Lorain High School, Morrison was an excellent student. After graduating withhonors from high school in 1949, Morrison ent

27、ered Howard University, one of thenations most prestigious black colleges. As a member of it, she toured Deep South,where for the first time she witnessed what life was like for black people in the South.That was a crucial and impressive experience in Tonis life, which influenced herwriting fifteen

28、years later. Morrison received a B.A. in English from Howard in 1953,then earned a M.A. also in English from Cornell University in 1955, for which shewrote a thesis on suicide in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. Aftergraduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Souther

29、n University inHouston, Texas (1955-1957) then returned to Howard to teach English.1Masters Thesis of Henan University of Science and TechnologyIn 1958 she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect and worked atHoward University. They had two children but divorced in 1964. After the divorce shem

30、oved to Syracuse, New York, where she worked as a textbook editor. A year and ahalf later she went to work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of RandomHouse.As an editor, Morrison played an important role in bringing black literature intothe mainstream. She edited books by such authors a

31、s Toni Cade Bambara, AngelaDavis and Gayl Jones. Especially she contributed a lot to design, edit, and produce TheBlack Book, published in 1974, which made her have a deep and comprehensiveunderstanding about Afro-American history and culture.1.1.2 Career and achievementsMorrison began writing ficti

32、on as part of an informal group of poets and writersat Howard University who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with ashort story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. The story later evolvedinto her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), which she wrote while raising two chi

33、ldrenand teaching at Howard, was chosen as a selection for Oprahs Book Club in 2000.In 1975, her novel Sula (1973) was nominated for the National Book Award. Herthird novel, Song of Solomon (1977), brought her national attention. The book was amain selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the first

34、novel by a black writer to beso chosen since Richard Wrights Native Son in 1940. It won the National Book CriticsCircle Award.In 1987 Morrisons novel Beloved became a critical success. When the novelfailed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics CircleAward, a number of w

35、riters protested over the omission. Shortly afterward, it won thePulitzer Prize for fiction. Beloved was adapted into the 1998 film of the same namestarring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garners lifestory again in an opera, Margaret Garner, with music by Richard Daniel

36、pour. In May2006, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novelpublished in the previous twenty-five years. ( Scott, 2006: 68)In 1987, Toni Morrison was named the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Councilof Humanities at Princeton University. She became the first black woman w

37、riter tohold a named chair at an Ivy League University. She taught creative writing and also2Chapter OneIntroductiontook part in the African-American studies, American studies and womens studiesprograms. She also started her next novel, Jazz, about life in the 1920s. The book waspublished in 1992.In

38、 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, making her theeighth woman and the first black woman to do so. In 1996 the National Endowmentfor the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federalgovernments highest honor for achievement in the humanities. Morrison

39、s lecture,entitled “The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations,” began with theaphorism, “ Time, it seems, has no future,” and cautioned against misuse of history todiminish expectations of the future. (Morrison, 2008: 186)So far, Morrison has created nine novels: The Bluest Eye (197

40、0), Sula(1973),Song of Solomon(1977), Tar Baby(1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise(1998),Love (2003) and A Mercy(2008), all of which are well-received by the public and haswon her many honors. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, andrichly detailed black characters. H

41、er works root deeply in the peculiar history, tradition,legends, and the lives of African Americans. She offers a penetrating look at thetrauma of African Americans and scrutinizes the damaging impact of the dominantculture. She pushes the African American novels to a newer and higher standard bothi

42、n thematic content and in the narrative skills. In her works, Toni Morrison hasexplored the experiences and roles of black women in a racist and male dominatedsociety. With her complex and multi-layered narratives and the unique culturalinheritance of African-Americans, Morrison shows utmost concern

43、 for the identity ofAfrican Americans.In her multiple roles as writer, editor, educator and scholar, Morrison hasconsistently demonstrated her commitment to black literature and culture whichestablished her place in the literary cannon as an Afro-American woman writer. TheNobel Prize for Literature

44、described her as “a literary artist of the first rank”, one “who,in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essentialaspect of American reality” and one who “delves into language itself, a language shewants to liberate from the fetters of race”. (Allen, 1997: 30)

45、She became the first Afro-American woman to appear on the cover of TIME Magazine in Jan. 19, 1998, becauseof her great achievements in literature. The 1993 Nobel Prize for literature marks not3Masters Thesis of Henan University of Science and Technologyonly her personal triumph but also the recognit

46、ion of the artistry of African Americanfiction and the black womans voice. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante includedToni Morrison on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. (Asante, 2002: 35)1.2 Relevant researches on Toni MorrisonSince Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1

47、993, She hasbecome the focus in the western readers and critics. As a result, relevant researchesabout her and her works are increasing in large numbers. According to statistics,PQDD (ProQuest Digital Dissertations) included more than 300 dissertations beforethe year of 2000. (Chen Fachun, 2000: 5)

48、By 2004, there had been about 120 doctoraldissertations about Morrison studies in the west. (Wang Yukuo, 2006: 2) In 1988,Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, marking Morrisons literary achievementhas been fully recognized by the U.S. mainstream literary world. In 1988-1993, manywestern sc

49、holars such as Harold Bloom, Nellie Mckay, Wilfred Samuels, DoreathaMbalia, Barbara Rigney, Trudier Harris, started writing books to study Morrison indepth. (Du Zhiqing, 2007: 4) In the west, feminism is always the theme of study onMorrison. Many famous scholars always focus their attention on femin

50、ism in theirstudy on Morrison such as Hazel Carby, Carole Davies, Elizabeth Cannon, Aoi Moriand so on. (Du Zhiqing, 2007: 123) Even some scholars do their researches onMorrison from the point of Marxist critical theory, represented by Richard Schur,Candice Jenkin and Chuck Jackson. (124)Despite a la

51、te start on Morrison research in China, it is undeniable that thedomestic audience has shown growing interest in her at present. Her novels havebecome hot topics in studies on American literature. It is also true that in China，Morrison had not received enough critical attention until she was awarded

52、 the NobelPrize for literature in1993. A number of Chinese scholars and researchers have began asystematic study of her works and have achieved certain results. Some influentialmagazines such as Foreign Literatures，Contemporary Foreign Literature, ForeignLiterature Review，Foreign Literature Studies,

53、 World Literature Recent Developmentsand so on, publish articles about her. The works of Toni Morrison: A Survey，writtenby Wang Jiaxiang and published in Foreign Literatures，No.4，1988，may be thefirst article to introduce critical knowledge on Morrison. Wang Shouren and Wu4Chapter OneIntroductionXiny

54、uns Gender, Race and Culture: Toni Morrison and American Black Literature ofthe Twentieth Century is the first academic book about Morrison (later producedrevised edition in 2004). In this book, by analyzing Morrisons novels, the authors tryto make a comprehensive discussion and a thorough interpret

55、ation of Morrisonsliterary thinking and artistic characteristics. This book marked a breakthrough and anew stage of Morrison study in China. After Wang Shourens book, treatises aboutMorrison develop very quickly and begin to bear fruit. Pain and Healing: A Study ofMaternal Love in Toni Morrisons Fic

56、tion from a Cultural Perspective wrriten by ZhuYingjie, published in Henan University Press, 2004, is a representative which aims toanalyze Morrison from the point of feminist and post-colonialism. Mao Dexins ToniMorrison: A Super Star of African-American Literature, published in ZhejiangUniversity

57、Press, 2006, is a book focusing on Morrisons literary creation. WangQuans A Lacanian Reading of Toni Morrisons Three Novels, published in ForeignLanguages Press, 2006, may be the first to interpret Morrison from Lacanian Theory.Some scholars choose to make comparative researches between Toni Morriso

58、n andother black women writers, exampled by Tang Hongmeis Race , Gender and Identity:A Study of Novels by Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, published in The EthnicPublishing House, 2006. In 2007, two important books on Morrison studies werepublished. Zhang Rulins A Study of Toni Morrison, published in

59、 Foreign LanguageTeaching and Research Press and Hu Juns A Study of the Identity Pursuit of AfricanAmericans in Toni Morrisons Fiction published in Beijing Language and CultureUniversity Press.Besides books, some famous scholars wrote articles and commentaries onMorrison from different research view

60、s. Such as Gao Jihais Narrative Features ofToni Morrison s Novels, published in Journal of PlA University of Foreign Languages,No.1, 2002. This essay starts with a discussion of the musical and paintingcharacteristics of her novels, then points out that her innovations lie in her absorptionof black

61、folklore and her rejection of the dominant white culture. Her novels mark thestrength and maturity of American black womens literature. Toni Morrison s CulturalEthnical Context, written by Zhu Xinfu, published in Foreign Literature Studies, No.3,2004, made a conclusion that Toni Morrisons cultural e

62、thnic context is a historical onein which the western classical tradition interacts with the Afro-American ethnic culture.5Masters Thesis of Henan University of Science and TechnologyWith her accumulating prestige, the past two decades has seen a great number ofresearches on Morrisons works from the angle of feminism, modernism,postmodernism, cultural criticism, slave narrative and so on. It is valuable to studyMorrisons writings in the context of cultural c