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Beloved by toni morrison critical analysis jstor
Beloved by toni morrison critical analysis jstor
History of slavery in the novel beloved
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Beloved is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel written by Toni Morrison and published in 1987. The story follows Sethe as she attempts to make peace with her present (for her, post Civil War America) and her past as a former slave and the atrocities she suffered at the hands of the "benevolent" Gardner family. Information given to the readers from different perspectives, multiple characters, and various time periods allows her audience to piece together the history of the family, their lives, as well as provide insight into slavery and the aftermath as a whole. The characters feel as though they discover more and more as the novel passes in time, just as history unfolds. Critically this novel is recognized as one of the greatest works on the subject of slavery's impact on the slaves, the owners, the past, and America's future. In this analysis of Beloved, the characteristics of new historicism will be used to evaluate this literary piece. New Historicism is a literary critique theory founded primarily by Stephen Greenblatt in the early 1980s. What began as a critique by Greenblatt of Shakespearean works became an improved theory of criticism. The basis of this theory is the opposite of historicism; new historicism critiques a work not only during the time period in which it takes place but also within the context of the time period it was written. In other words, there is no objectivity. When applying new historicism to Beloved, there are certain characteristics that may be applied, including: whether or not there is a sense of mourning, healing, and redemption in the story, if the events that occur in the novel reflect the times in which the author lived, if the meanings of words and the context have changed or remained s... ... middle of paper ... ...oved and the Moniyhan Report." Modern Language Association 111.3 (1996): 408-20. JSTOR. Web. 11 June 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/463165. Brizee, Allen, and J C. Tompkins. "New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present)." Prudue Online Writing Lab. Purdue University, 16 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/09/. Changizi, Parisa, and Parvin Ghasemi. "A Foucauldian Reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved." Journal of Research in Peace, Gender and Development 2.1 (2012): 001-05. Print. Kaes, Anton. "New Historicism: Writing Literary History in the Postmodern Era." Monatshefte 84.2 (1992): 148-58. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30161347. Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Print. Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. 5th ed. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. 215-17. Print.