Cultural Memory In Song Of Solomon And Jazz

German Egyptologist Jan Assmann put forward the conception of"cultural memory"in his work Cultural Memory published in 1997."Cultural memory"is defined by Jan Assmann as the"outer dimension of human memory"embracing two different concepts:"memory culture"and"reference to the past". He also thinks that cultural memory has its stability----its horizon does not change with the passing of time. Its stability arises from fateful events of the past, whose memory is maintained through cultural formation such as texts, rites and monuments, as well as institutional communication such as recitation, practice, and observance.To Morrison, memory has one foot in the past and the other one in the future. If black people want to look forward, they have to look back. Therefore, cultural memory weighs a lot in Morrison's novels. This paper, divided into four chapters, aims to analyze the phenomenon of cultural memory in her works Song of Solomon and Jazz from the perspective of cultural memory.The first chapter is the introductory part. This chapter gives a short and brief introduction of Toni Morrison's works and the status quo of the studying of her works, bringing the idea to the point that this paper aims to analyze her works from the perspective of cultural memory. The second chapter introduces the definition and functions of cultural memory and also presents the existence of cultural memory in American Literature.The third chapter is the paramount chapter of the whole paper. It analyzes the cultural memory in Song of Solomon and Jazz with detailed information in five different aspects: the recreation of cultural memory, the contents of cultural memory, the means of passing on cultural memory and the redemption of cultural memory, in order to reveal the significance of cultural memory in her creation of writing. Song of Solomon is a story about a protagonist called Milkman who lives in a northern city and traces his ancestral roots back to the South finding his identity. In this process, cultural memory plays an essential part in the protagonist's growth and redemption. Jazz takes the background of 1920s and reconstructs and interprets the historical period when thousands of black people move from southern rural areas to the northern industrial cities. The fourth chapter is the conclusion. It concludes that from the two novels, we can see the problem at the center of Morrison's writing is how to maintain an Afro-American heritage once the relationship to the black rural South has been stretched thin over distance and generations. When the witnesses of the slavery and racism, as a generation, have faded out from this world, what will be the fate of the memories that come along with them—will the memory go with them or will the memory stay with the next generation in a certain way? What does it mean to the offspring and how is it going to affect them? These are the important factors which are responsible for the imperativeness of the studies of cultural memory in Toni Morrison's novels. This paper will discuss the cultural memory in Song of Solomon and Jazz, and how the cultural memory functions as a means of saving grace to the African-Americans.