Musicality In Toni Morrison's Jazz

Toni Morrison, the only Nobel Prize winner among African-American women writers, has attracted a wide audience and ignited much criticism since publication of The Bluest Eyes, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise and Love. Each work is clearly concerned with the psychological tribulation of the black people especially the doubly marginalized black women. Morrison skillfully introduces black music into her linguistic and structural experimentations. Her sixth novel, Jazz, includes extensive reference to jazz music; moreover, it imitates the jazzy techniques and structures, thus the whole novel resembles a splendid jazz performance.Several critical works about Jazz have noticed its music elements; however, few have endeavored to analyze systematically how jazz infiltrates the whole novel. This thesis aims to explore the novel's abundant jazz notes, so as to provide a new perspective for appreciating Jazz.Introduction points out that the African American intellectuals are the people who successfully employ music for literary creation, by which means they are able to expand the scope of literary criticism. And then it discusses the critical receptions on Jazz and the significance of choosing the topic. Chapter One discusses the important role music plays in black people's lives: as a way of self-expression and cultural identity formation. Then, I prove music tradition in black literature by the analysis of Langston Hughes'blues poetry and jazz ingredients in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.Chapter Two focuses on Toni Morrison and Jazz. I analyze Morrison's fascination for music and briefly introduce the novel Jazz, after that, I provide fruitful instances to present the textual reference to music in the novel.Chapter Three includes a discussion of Jazz's musical forms and styles, and hopefully would be one of the most important and innovative part. This chapter is subdivided into two parts, using substantive examples to interpret the incorporation of improvisation and call-and-response in the novel.Improvisation is the quintessential feature of jazz and it inspires Morrison to build her textual and syntactic constructions.Call-and-response is a heritage from African forefathers as well as a distinct technique of jazz music. Morrison consciously employs it in her dialogues and non-dialogues. Furthermore, call-and-response of jazz happens both internally (in the band) and externally (between the band and the audience); Morrison also exhibits the double meanings when constructing her narrations. The interactions between narrators within the text imitate the communication among the musicians, and the interplay between narrators and readers encourages readers'active participation and creativity.Chapter Four is a further study of Musicality in Jazz. It includes two parts. Jazz is a polyphonic novel, which reveals Morrison's attempt to achieve the sounding effects of multi-instruments and polyrhythms in jazz performance. The first person narrators behave like soloists in a jazz band, and the multiple third person narrators simultaneously improvise a set of melody, which sounds like a polyrhythmic jazz performance.Syncopation and the amazingly adoptive punctuations give Jazz music tones. Also, the jazzy structure of the novel shows how Morrison knits jazz into its fabric design.Conclusion sums up what has been discussed and restates the main points of the arguments.In Jazz, Morrison presents a new perspective of textualizing the history of the African Americans in the Jazz Age. More importantly, she has done her best to protect African American folklore and to restore the black oral and cultural traditions. Hence, she distances herself from those white writers in her unique narrative strategies and writing skills.