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Beloved: An Open Text with Jazz Features

Author: XieMei
Tutor: HeChangYi
School: Yunnan Normal University
Course: English Language and Literature
Keywords: postmodernistic narrative techniques and discourse features of jazz Toni Morrison Beloved
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Type: Master's thesis
Year: 2008
Downloads: 38
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Abstract


Toni Morrison is one of the most influential American writers in contemporary American literature. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, the first black writer and the second American female writer to enjoy such honor. Beloved, published in 1987, is one of her representative works, which has created a sensation in the American literary world and has often been regarded as a masterpiece in American history. Critics have done much research on Beloved from various aspects. For example, psychoanalysis, reader-response, feminism, structuralism, and cultural studies have all been applied to this novel. The special narrative techniques of the novel have also been a focus of its studies, but only a few critics have focused their attention on the great influence of jazz as a kind of music on the narrative devices of the novel. However, even fewer critics have taken jazz as a version of American postmodernistic narrative techniques and discourse which are fully embodied in this novel.This thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One is an introduction to the author Toni Morrison and the novel Beloved. Chapter Two gives a historical review on the studies of Beloved made by international and domestic critics from various perspectives. Chapter Three introduces the methodology applied to this thesis which mainly focuses on American postmodernistic narrative and discourse as well as some conspicuous features of jazz which are closely related to those black people, and then demonstrates the relationship between those features of jazz and American postmodernistic narrative and discourse. At the same time, the author reveals Toni Morrison’s viewpoint towards her literary works and American postmodernistic narrative and discourse. Chapter Four centers on how those jazz elements with features of postmodernistic narrative and discourse find expression in the novel Beloved. For instance, improvisation, rhythm, blue notes, call-and-response pattern and repetition pattern as well as other features cleverly present in Beloved, all help to celebrate the power of an improvisatory musical language which deepens the themes and creates the artistic beauty of the novel. Chapter Five draws the conclusion that Beloved is a novel which is filled with jazz features in the style of American postmodernistic narrative techniques and discourse.

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