Contested boundaries : new critical essays on the fiction of Toni Morrison / edited by Maxine L. Montgomery.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Montgomery, Maxine L.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Morrison, Toni, 1931-2019--Criticism and interpretation.

Morrison, Toni.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (170 p.)

Edition:

1.

Place of Publication:

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK : Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Contested Boundaries aims to map the space between A Mercy, Toni Morrisonas ninth and arguably most enigmatic novel, and the fiction comprising the authoras multiple-text canon. The volume accomplishes this through the inclusion of eight original essays representing a range of critical approaches that trouble narrative boundaries demarcating the novels included in Morrisonas evolving opus, with A Mercy serving as a locus for discussion of her re-figuration of concerns central to her narrative project. Issues relevant to the conflicted mother-child relationship, the haunting legacy of slavery, the black female body as a site of trauma, the thorny quest for an idealized home, the perilous transatlantic journey, the demands associated with love, and, yes, the desire for mercy recur, but they do so with a difference, a MorrisonianA twist that demands close intellectual scrutiny. Essays included in this volume are invested in a persistent scholarly investigation of this narrative and rhetorical play. - - The publication of A Mercy represents a climactic moment in Morrisonas evolving political consciousness, her fictional geography, and, consequently, a shift in the margins marking her multiple-text universe. The complicated markers of difference figuring in RecitatifA and continuing with Paradise and Love culminate in the authoras ninth work of fiction. This volume ventures to chart that change, not for the sake of encoding it, but in an effort to open up new ways of interrogating her writing. - -

Contents:

part I. 'Are you afraid?' : merciful haunting in a new world setting

part II. 'A slave by choice' : re-reading the (neo) slave narrative

part III. 'To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal' : memory, trauma, and maternal loss

part Ivolume 'It was not a grace; it was a mercy' : spirituality in the Americas

part volume 'This land is our home ... but I am exile here' : alternative geographies.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed November 9, 2013).

ISBN:

9781443853316

1443853313

OCLC:

859833534