"Song of Solomon": Critical Overview
Limping or Flying? Psychoanalysis, Afrocentrism, and Song of Solomon
Author(s): Ashley Tidey
Source: College English, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Sept. 2000), pp. 48-70
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/379031
Keywords: Sigmund Freud, Death instinct, Dona Richards, Subjectivity, Afrocentrism, Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Main Claim: “Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon exposes precisely … [a] complicated coexistence of two cultural resonances—the African and the Western—that inform and reflect the development of the subjectivity of Milkman, the protagonist. In this case, two possible narratives of subjectivity can be used to interpret this double dynamic. On the one hand, Freud’s psychoanalytic discussions of the ‘death instinct’ in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) offers a powerful framework for describing Milkman’s constitution as a subject. On the other hand, the Afrocentric frame of thought that grounds Dona Richards’s essay ‘The Implications of African-American Spirituality’ (1985) provides a useful counterpoint to Freud and marks an equally powerful scheme for understanding the protagonist’s development” (50).
Key Quotation(s):
“The steps of Freud’s paradigm serve well, especially in Part I of the novel, as a descriptive model for Milkman’s growth, and yet the negative valuation attached to Freud’s notion of progression as regression is itself ‘undone’ in Morrison’s novel, in light of notions of the subject drawn from African traditions, which are inscribed in Part II of the text. Richards’s essay offers not only definitions of African notions of death and ritual but also, in her emphasis on the need for African Americans to affirm cultural connection to African heritage, an example of what she would term ‘Afrocentric’ interpretation” (51).
“One can juxtapose Richard’s representation of the collectively defined identity of the African to Freud’s narrative of the singular self’s ‘undoing’” (51).
“This essay explores the possibility of seeing in Morrison’s novel the co-existence of two such narratives of subjectivity; it examines, more specifically, the extent to which the application of a Western and non-Western narrative of subject formation yields conflicting interpretations of the novel and, in particular, of the novel’s ending” (51).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Awkward, Michael. “‘Unruly and Let Loose’: Myth, Ideology, and Gender in Song of Solomon.” Callaloo 13 (1990): 482-98.
Branch, Eleanor. “Through the Maze of the Oedipal: Milkman’s Search for Self in Song of Solomon.” Literature and Psychology 41.1-2 (1995): 52-84.
Brenner, Gerry. “Song of Solomon: Morrison’s Rejection of Rank’s Monomyth and Feminism.” The New England Quarterly 15.1 (Spring 1987): 13-24.
Farrell, Susan. “‘Who’d He Leave Behind?’ Gender and History in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon.” Bucknell Review 39.1 (1995): 131-150.
Freud, Sigmund. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trans. James Strachey. New York: Norton, 1961.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
Richards, Dona. “The Implications of African-American Spirituality.” Assante and Assante 207-32.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Myth, Feminism]
“‘Unruly and Let Loose’: Myth, Ideology, and Gender in Song of Solomon.”
Author(s): Michael Awkward
Source: Callaloo, Vol. 13, No. 3. (Summer, 1990), pp. 482-498.
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2931332
Keywords: Afrocentric, Mythology, Feminism, Folk tales, Gender, Black Feminism
Main Claim: “A careful analysis of the subtle, appropriative nature of Morrison’s mythic figurations (including what is apparently a traditional heroic male act of archaeology—its protagonist Milkman Dead’s ‘archetypical search for self and for transcendence,’ (Lee 43) reveals her complex inscription of ideology, or, more accurately, ideologies: the afrocentric and feminist politics that inform Song of Solomon” (482-483).
Key Quotation(s):
“[Morrison] strongly suggests a dual—and, in some respects, potentially conflictive—function for the novel, and, particularly, for a purposefully ‘classical, mythological, archetypal’ text such as Song of Solomon. Three dual functions are: 1) to preserve the traditional Afro-American folktales, folk wisdom, and general cultural beliefs, and 2) to adapt to contemporary times and needs such traditional beliefs by infusing them with ‘new information,’ and to transmit the resultant amalgam of traditional and ‘new’ to succeeding generations” (483).
“What the criticism devoted to Song of Solomon has failed to respond to in an adequate manner where Morrison’s employment of myth and epic is concerned is the author’s inscription of the ‘new.’ For Morrison’s version of the myth of the flying African is in several crucial respects strategically altered in the form of an updated version of the traditional narrative” (483).
“The conflict between the archetypal and the ‘new’ in Song of Solomon, then, is of particular significance where gender is concerned because, as is generally the case in Western mythic systems, including the genre of the epic, Morrison’s updated version suggests that masculinity has become a virtual prerequisite for participation in transcendent action” (484).
“The text of Song of Solomon serves as a wonderfully appropriate site for a black feminist criticism—for a discourse attuned to intersections between afrocentric and feminist ideologies” (484).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Lee, Dorothy H. “Song of Solomon: To Ride the Air.” Black American Literature Forum 16 (1982): 64-70.
Hughes, Langston, and Arna Bontemps, eds. The Book of Negro Folklore. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1958.
Lester, Julius. Black Folktales. New York: Grove, 1969.
Stotkin, Richard. “Myth and the Production of History.” Ideology and Classic American Literature, Eds. Sacvan Bercovitch and Myra Jehlen. New York: Cambridge UP, 1986. 70-90.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Myth,]
Signifying Circe in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): Judith Fletcher
Source: The Classical World, Vol. 99, No. 4 (Summer, 2006), pp.405-418.
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf o the Classical Association of the Atlantic States
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4353064
Keywords: Names/naming, Homer, Odyssey, Circe, Mythology
Main Claim: “The integrity of the narrative is accordingly stretched between a system of dualities: men’s and women’s stories compete for authority, Western mythic traditions are contested by African folklore, and the myth of the catabasis, the descent to the Underworld, is challenged by a fantasy of ascent manifested in the folktale of the man who could fly…Morrison employs the figure of Circe to position her novel both within and beyond the classical tradition of the catabatic narrative” (405).
Key Quotation(s):
“The resolution of the novel, which implicates a female oral tradition and African folktale, suggests a more subversive approach to the familiar mythic structure” (406.)
“Morrison manipulates and subverts the catabatic traditions connected with coming of age or initiation narratives and how she situates the obligatory descent to the Underworld with relation to the story of flight” (406).
“Although [Circe’s] role in Song of Solomon is obviously modeled on this Homeric tradition, Morrison scholars have not fully explored and accounted for her origins outside the novel” (406).
“Morrison’s Circe is by no means simply a carbon copy of Homer’s, but she does invite the reader to recall the traditional heroic saga from which she seems to be imported. It is by examining how she both signifies that narrative tradition and operates as an agent of its rupture that we understand the full implications of her presence and power” (408).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Brenner, Gerry. “Song of Solomon: Morrison’s Rejection of Rank’s Monomyth and Feminism,” The New England Quarterly 15.1 (1987) 13-24.
Harris, A. Leslie. “Myth as Structure in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” MELUS 7.3: Ethnic Women Writers 1 (1980) 70.
Mobley, M.S. Folk Roots and Mythic Wings in Sarah Orne Jewett and Toni Morrison (Baton Rouge 1991) 102-8.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Myth, Feminism]
Song of Solomon: Morrison’s Rejection of Rank’s Monomyth and Feminism
Author(s): Gerry Brenner
Source: Studies in American Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 1987, pp. 13-24.
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1353/saf.1987.0024
Keywords: Myth, Otto Rank, Monomyth, Feminism
Main Claim: “Despite Morrison’s shrewd use of the monomyth on Milkman’s behalf, she skillfully mocks him and the novel’s other men. Offsetting his and their deflation is a subtle spectrum of praiseworthy women, prime among whom is the novel’s only character of heroic stature, Pilate. ‘Marvelous’ details circle her with a mythic nimbus that—combined with the humane values by which she conducts her life—rejects the sexism of Rank’s monomyth and the expectations of feminists” (13).
Key Quotation(s):
“Although Morrison follows each of the road signs along the map of Rank’s monomyth, she obscures that map by blurring the dates of the novel’s events and, more important, undercuts its conventional celebration of the role of the hero in a modern American culture” (15).
“Beneath the positive thrust of her imaginative prose and the seemingly upbeat ending of her novel lies Morrison’s disdain for Milkman because of what he fails to learn on his journey, that in his gene pool also swims the congenital habit of desertion” (18).
“By appropriating Rank’s monomyth, tailoring her hero to fit its criteria, and then bringing him close to showcase the incongruity of her thirty-two-year-old wearing a suit leagues larger than he, Morrison continues the ambiguous and ambivalent analysis of myths on which all of her novels pivot” (18).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
De Weaver, Jacqueline. “Toni Morrison’s Use of Fairy Tale, Folk Tale, and Myth in Song of Solomon, SFQ, 44 (1980), 131-44.
Harris, A. Leslie. “Myth as Structure in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” MELUS 7.3: Ethnic Women Writers 1 (1980) 70.
Lee, Dorothy H. “Song of Solomon: To Ride the Air.” Black American Literature Forum 16 (1982): 64-70.
Lester, Julius. Black Folktales. (New York: Grove Press, 1970), pp. 147-52.
Scruggs, Charles. “The Nature of Desire in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” Arizona Quarterly, 387 (1982), 311-35.
Willis, Susan. “Eruptions of Funk: Historicizing Toni Morrison,” BALF, 16 (1982), 34-42.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Myth]
Myth as Structure in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): A. Leslie Harris
Source: MELUS, Vol. 7, No. 3, Ethnic Women Writers 1 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 69-76
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/467029
Keywords: Myth, Otto Rank, Quest, Icarus
Main Claim: “Morrison fuses Afro-American myth with the cultural, moral, and religious beliefs of both the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman heritages to fashion her own myth. She does not simply rework archetypes but blends the natural with the supernatural and the historically factual with the fantastic. More particularly, she selects one of the oldest and most pervasive mythic themes, the hero and his question, to inform and control her narrative structure” (70).
Key Quotation(s):
“[Morrison] turns to myth to underpin her narrative, but does so without transforming her novel into pure fantasy or overloading her story with literary allusions. Morrison’s success in making one black man’s struggle for identity universal is partly explained by her structural use of myth to show man’s constant search for reassurance in myths” (69).
“If we follow Morrison’s lead and concentrate on the growth of Macon Dead…we find that her novel is cohesive, following the clear pattern of birth and youth, alienation, quest, confrontation, and reintegration common to mythic heroes as disparate as Moses, Achilles, and Beowulf. Such a mythic chronology emphasizes the hero’s rejection of and eventual assimilation into his society” (70).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality, trans. By Willard R. Trask. (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 13.
Rank, Otto. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, trans. F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe (New York: Robert Brunner, 1959), p. 61.
Slochower, Harry. Mythopoesis: Mythic Patterns in the Literary Classics (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), p. 22.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Myth]
Myth as Structure in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): A. Leslie Harris
Source: MELUS, Vol. 7, No. 3, Ethnic Women Writers 1 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 69-76
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/467029
Keywords: Myth, Otto Rank, Quest, Icarus
Main Claim: “Morrison fuses Afro-American myth with the cultural, moral, and religious beliefs of both the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman heritages to fashion her own myth. She does not simply rework archetypes but blends the natural with the supernatural and the historically factual with the fantastic. More particularly, she selects one of the oldest and most pervasive mythic themes, the hero and his question, to inform and control her narrative structure” (70).
Key Quotation(s):
“[Morrison] turns to myth to underpin her narrative, but does so without transforming her novel into pure fantasy or overloading her story with literary allusions. Morrison’s success in making one black man’s struggle for identity universal is partly explained by her structural use of myth to show man’s constant search for reassurance in myths” (69).
“If we follow Morrison’s lead and concentrate on the growth of Macon Dead…we find that her novel is cohesive, following the clear pattern of birth and youth, alienation, quest, confrontation, and reintegration common to mythic heroes as disparate as Moses, Achilles, and Beowulf. Such a mythic chronology emphasizes the hero’s rejection of and eventual assimilation into his society” (70).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Eliade, Mircea. Myth and Reality, trans. By Willard R. Trask. (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1963), p. 13.
Rank, Otto. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, trans. F. Robbins and Smith Ely Jelliffe (New York: Robert Brunner, 1959), p. 61.
Slochower, Harry. Mythopoesis: Mythic Patterns in the Literary Classics (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970), p. 22.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Myth, Folklore]
Folklore and Community in Song of Solomon
Author(s): Blake, Susan L.
Source: MELUS, Vol. 7, No. 3, Ethnic Women Writers 1 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 69-76
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/467030
Keywords: Folklore, Community, Identity, Individual
Main Claim: “In basing Milkman’s identity on a folktale, Morrison calls attention to one of the central themes in all her fiction, the relationship between individual identity and community, for folklore is by definition the expression of a community—of the common experiences, beliefs, and values that identify a folk as a group. The use of the folktale of the flying Africans in this quest seems to establish equivalence between Milkman’s discovery of community and his achievement of identity, but paradoxes in the use of the folktale suggest a more complex relationship and help to define just what Morrison means by the concept of community, a concept which she vigorously endorses” (77).
Key Quotation(s):
“The ‘song of Solomon’ that provides the title of Toni Morrison’s third novel is a variant of a well-known Gullah folktale about a group of African-born slaves who rose up one day from the field where they were working and flew back to Africa” (77).
“Community is not only the end of his quest but the means; Milkman makes progress only as he acknowledges community” (78).
“Milkman finds his connection with his ancestors as he acknowledges his connection with his contemporaries; he finds community through community” (79).
“The multiple ways of seeing Milkman’s discovery as a discovery of community suggest that Song of Solomon is an elaborate, and entertaining, expansion of the equation between identity and community” (79).
“The significance of both Milkman’s quest and the folktale his search is founded on are paradoxical. One the one hand, his quest leads Milkman to his kin, close and remote; on the other, it sets him apart, like the quest hero of myth and fairy tale( whom he also resembles) as one who overcomes obstacles and plumbs mysteries with the help of magical guides (like Pilate), but who ascends the throne or transcends mortality (as Milkman does when he dares to fly) alone…these apparent contradictions make us question the relationship between individuality and community in Song of Solomon and help to define both Morrison’s concept of community and her sense of the relationship of present to past” (80).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Christian, Barbara. “Community and Nature: The Novels of Toni Morrison,” The Journal of Ethnic Studies 7, 4 (Winter, 1980), 65-78.
Lounsberry, Barbara, and Grace Ann Hovet. “Principles of Perception in Toni Morrison’s Sula,” Black American Literature Forum, 1, 3 (Winter, 1979), 126-29.
Georgia Writers’ Project. Drums and Shadows, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Psychoanalysis, Trauma]
Alternatives to the “Talking Cure”: Black Music as Traumatic Testimony in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): Vicki Visvis
Source: African American Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer, 2008), pp. 255-268
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of African American Review (St. Louis University)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40301210
Keywords: Psychoanalysis, Freud, Talking cure, Black music, Blues, Traumatic therapy
Main Claim: “Music and song in Song of Solomon are situated as akin to the ‘talking cure.’ This link is based on the ways in which expression, in both paradigms of testimony, has a performative function. As in conventional models of testimony like the ‘talking cure,’ black music is a speech act that engenders emotional catharsis and brings latent memories to the fore” (255).
Key Quotation(s):
“In this essay, I consider the ways in which black music is situated as an alternative to the ‘talking cure’ in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, and explore how its status as a narrative paradigm and cultural artifact encourages a reconsideration of the central place of both language and Western culture in current theories of testimony” (256).
“Song of Solomon, however, does not simply establish parallels between these two paradigms of testimony; ultimately, the novel inherently explores the ways in which they differ. Song of Solomon suggests that black music serves the same purpose as talk therapy, but its configuration as a model of testimony distinctly varies. So although the two paradigms may have the same emotional and psychological function—that is, what they do is similar—the ways in which they accomplish these underlying functions fundamentally differ” (255).
“Our understanding of traumatic testimony, particularly as ‘talking cure,’ implicitly privileges two coefficients: language and Western culture…similarly, theories of trauma and testimony are grounded in Western assumptions and traditions” (255).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Branch, Eleanor. “Through the Maze of the Oedipal: Milkman’s Search for Self in Song of Solomon.” Literature and Psychology 41.1-2 (1995): 52-84.
Davis, Angela. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. New York: Vintage, 1998.
Du Bois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. 1903. New York: Penguin, 1996.
Freud, Sigmund, and Josef Breuer. Studies on Hysteria. 1895. Trans. James Strachey and Alix Strachey. The Penguin Freud Library. Ed. Angela Richards. Vol. 3. London: Penguin, 1991.
Rubenstein, Roberta. “Singing the Blues/Reclaiming Jazz: Toni Morrison and Cultural Mourning.” Mosaic 31.2 (June 1998): 147.63.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Psychoanalysis, Identity (?)]
Milkman’s Flying: The Scapegoat Transcended in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): Philip M. Royster
Source: CLA Journal, Vol. 24, No. 4 (June, 1981), pp.419-440.
Published by: College Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44321668
Keywords: Scapegoat-victim, Transformation, Transcendence, Unconscious, Identity, Family, Relationships, Social order
Main Claim: “The primary problem that Milkman’s progress is designed to relieve is his scapegoat-victim role in relation to himself, his family, his society, and his culture. Through the knowledge he accumulates, Milkman experiences a series of transformations of his consciousness that identify and confirm the burden of his scapegoat-victim position and role in Part I and that transcend that role and reconcile him to the social order in Part II” (420).
Key Quotation(s):
“With a deft touch the narrative sketches a caricature of a typical unconscious scapegoat-victim: the lack of concern for one’s self prepares the victim to be used by the social order rather than to use one’s conscious energy for self-reliance and self-determination. A collapsed imagination hampers the ability to perceive alternative actions and conditions, and therefore to manipulate as well as to select from the environment” (420).
“Milkman’s desire to escape his parents’ past becomes a motive for his search for a cache of gold that his father urgers him to steal from Aunt Pilate; with his share of the gold he expects to be able to afford to leave town. His involvement in the scheme has the unexpected result of producing a sequence of episodes that contribute to his developing a mature identity and breaking out of his unconscious scapegoat-victim role” (432).
“Milkman’s consciousness takes root in the soil of his ancestors. In the Afro-American literary tradition Milkman achieves what Jean Toomer’s Kabnis missed through fear and pompous pride. Milkman discovers that he belongs to the world and to his culture and that he can experience a certain harmony with nature. The disappearance of the limp reinforces symbolically Milkman’s new relationship to the social order. He has experienced a healing, and now he belongs” (435).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Watkins, Mel. “Talk with Toni Morrison” (New York Times Book Review, 7 Sept. 1977), p. 50.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Identity(?)]
Milkman’s Search for Family in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): Barbara E. Cooper
Source: CLA Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2 (December 1989), pp.145-156..
Published by: College Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44322079
Keywords: Family, Domestic values, Identity
Main Claim: “Conflict, identity, and family relationships are thematically important to Toni Morrison’s award-winning novel, Song of Solomon…Milkman’s search for identity does involve racial conflict, social transition, and community values. However, on the most basic level, his search for identity is intertwined with family and domestic values” (145).
Key Quotation(s):
“Milkman’s search for identity is closely connected with what he learns about domestic values in two conflicting households. In his father’s house, he lives amidst all the trappings of pleasant domesticity. However, his father’s hatred has destroyed the lives of his mother and two sisters. In his aunt’s household, he sees poverty, no indoor plumbing, and no comfortable furniture; however, family relationships flourish there. The differences in these two households represent a struggle between domestic values and hatred” (146).
“In the midst of this conflict, [Milkman] begins his journey through an understanding of family relationships and his heritage. Only when Milkman sees the destructive power of hatred can the Dead family come back to life” (146).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Christian, Barbara. “Community and Nature: The Novels of Toni Morrison,” Journal of Ethnic Studies, No. 74 (1980), 65.
Davis, Cynthia A. “Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrison’s Fiction,” Contemporary Literature, 23 (Summer 1982), 333.
Royster, Philip M. “Milkman’s Flying: The Scapegoat Transcended in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” CLA Journal, 24 (June 1982), 419.
Scruggs, Charles. “The Nature of Desire in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon,” Arizona Quarterly, 38 (Winter 1982), 312.
Willis, Susan. “Eruptions of Funk: Historicizing Toni Morrison,” Black American Literature Forum, 16 (Spring 1982), 34.
[Categories/Possible Tags: Storytelling, Tradition, Culture]
Orality, Literacy, and Memory in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon
Author(s): Joyce Irene Middleton
Source: College English, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Jan., 1993), pp. 64-75.
Published by: National Council of Teachers of English
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/378365
Keywords: Oral storytelling, Memory, Culture, Traditional
Main Claim: “At several key moments in Song of Solomon, Morrison’s storyteller focuses on oral-literate tensions. Three characters—Macon Dead, First Corinthians, and Milkman—show how their social and political conceptions of oral and written language either empower them or render them spiritually, socially, or emotionally impotent. Because of their conceptions, these characters either cultivate or suppress the communal and inner voices that animate their personal, auditory, and associative memory” (65).
Key Quotation(s):
“Literary critics praise Toni Morrison’s novels as ‘modernist’ and ‘experimental,’ but such criticism overlooks the extent to which her fiction draws on the oldest literary tradition of all, that of oral storytelling…by using this highly literate and literary genre, she privileges oral memory and the oral culture of the African-American community and dramatizes the cultural conflicts between oral and literate traditions” (64).
“Toni Morrison’s novels are especially rich in participatory oral forms such as songs, poetic language, formulaic features, the language of ritual and oral epic, which appeal for audience involvement and do not support an aesthetic view of art for art’s sake” (64).
“Toni Morrison’s fiction encourages literature and language scholars to reexamine the relationship between the narrative structures of traditional oral storytelling and those of the modern novel, to analyze the different cultural assumptions that readers make about texts from literature and oral perspectives, and to recognize the significance of oral compositional techniques in African-American literature” (64-5).
“In Song of Solomon, memory and intimacy are prerequisites for regaining such ancestral knowledge and personal wisdom. Morrison’s readers observe how alphabetic literacy, a means to success and power in the external, material, and racist world—as Macon Dead’s family achieves it—alienates these characters from their rituals, their inner spiritual lives, and their oral memories” (65).
Key Citations in Works Cited:
Bambara, Toni Cade. “On Keeping a Dream Notebook.” Creative Writing Workshop, Penn State University, Fall 1989.
Thomas, H. Nigel. Form Folklore to Fiction. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Hurston, Zora Neale. “Characteristics of Negro Expression.” The Sanctified Church. Berkeley: Turtle Island Press, 1981. 49-68.
Morrison, Toni. “Memory, Creation, and Writing.” Thought 59 (December 1984): 385-90.