10.26180/5c9d92fd6a677
Adam Jabbur
Adam
Jabbur
Narrative Properties in Toni Morrison's Beloved
Monash University
2019
Morrison
Locke
Jacobs
African-American literary history
Literary Studies not elsewhere classified
2019-03-29 07:22:08
Journal contribution
https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Narrative_Properties_in_Toni_Morrison_s_Beloved/7914605
<p>This
essay places Toni Morrison’s <i>Beloved</i>
into conversation with John Locke’s labor theory of property and Harriet
Jacobs’s <i>Incidents in the Life of a Slave
Girl</i>. I argue that Morrison adapts the Enlightenment tropes often found in
slave narratives to her own postmodern project, creating a novel that not only
refigures the Enlightenment tradition, but also searches for ways to reconcile
African-American literary history with African Americans’ historical exclusion
from the rights and protections, including that of self-ownership, championed
by liberal philosophy. As Morrison examines the implications of locating a
seminal component of her own literary tradition within an historically adverse
intellectual framework, she demonstrates the capacity of narrative to
synthesize competing ideological paradigms and fashion visionary imaginings of
the future.</p>