On Magic Realism In Jazz

Magic Realism is a modern fiction school, which achieves a top position in the world literature. It combines the objective realism and the magic to transcend the realism limit, absorbs the materials from the fables, folklores and myths and relates to the social reality at the same time. The principles of Magic Realism represent the changeable and unpredictable politics and social reality through the juxtaposition of the reality and the fantasy, the change of weird and traceless time, the enigmatic narration and plot setting and the inexplicable mysterious factors etc. If the Latin American writers adapt this writing technique to best describe the fate and the situation of the Latin countries and their people, Morrison is a pretty example to develop this skill to reflect the African-American realistic life, social history, politics economy and so on.Morrison accepts and employs this mysterious technique, absorbs the native traditional culture and melts the various artistic skills to show the life of the people, so her novels are achieved the high appraises and flooded with critics about Morrison and her works. The thesis intends to analyze Morriosn's current works—Jazz from the angle of Magic Realism, which is to discuss the inheritance and the creation of this theory in Jazz for displaying the unique charm of this novel, better describing the black social reality and demonstrating people's helplessness, confusion and loneliness as well as Morrison's warning and hope. Meanwhile, the fantastic employment of Magic Realism can cause people's concern about the reality, fate and value of people and show the profound historical and realistic meaning.The thesis includes three parts: introduction, body and conclusion.The part of introduction briefly states the story of this novel and its achievements in the literature, illustrates the study situation of this novel from home and abroad and puts forward the purpose and the significance of this thesis, that is, from the new angle—the Magic Realism to make a thorough and systematic analysis of this novel so as to show Morrison's remarkable creation of this technique and reflect the profound meaning and practical significance.The body is composed of three chapters. Chapter One gives the relevant background information about the discussed content, which is divided into two parts. The first part is mainly about the definition, development, characteristics and principles of the Magic Realism. Magic Realism is a most important literary school of the 20th century in Latin America, which occupies a vital position in the 20th western literature and gains the wide influence in the world. Then some Latin American writers marry the Magic Realism with the Surrealism to form the special Latin American Magic Realism literature. As a peculiar literary style in Latin America, Magic Realism has its unique features and techniques and endows the works with Magic color. The second part is to illustrate the reasons of Morrison's choice of Magic Realism because of her life experience and historical and cultural background. Morrison lives in an African-American family and has great influence from the African black tradition. Her families are good at telling the ghost stories and the myths, which have become Morriosn's materials of her novels. In addition, as for her historical, cultural and social background, Morrison always sticks to the black literature writing technique, especially the magic principles to reflect the social reality in the main stream of white culture.Chapter Two analyses the characteristics of Magic Realism represented in Jazz. In her novel, Morriosn draws a picture of the African American life since 1926 to redisplay their ups-and-downs fates in the cruel social environment.This chapter is divided into three parts to discuss the magic characteristics of the Magic Realism. The first part is the employment of the mythological archetypes, which is one of the most important features of Magic Realism. Some authors often use this archetype to explore their life era. Morrison is one of them to produce this fantastic effect and put on the magic coat for this novel by the wide use of African folklores and the western myths.The second part is the magic narrative strategy used in Jazz. Morrison breaks the traditional chapter setting to seek the changeable and mysterious technique. Morrison is cultivated by the black traditional culture such as the black oral tradition and circular time conception, which forms the fragmented narrative feature. Moreover, this narrative strategy provides the wide space for the readers and invites the readers to actively participate in the reading and the illustration of the textbook. In the third part, the writing technique of the magic realism is created in this novel. Morrison puts the music elements into the fiction narration and ingeniously incorporates characteristics of jazz music into her composition of this novel, which gives the novel a jazz style to describe the black's city life. The jazz style like call-and-response patterns, improvisations and pause effect endows the novel with the beauty of unique rhythm and improvisatory creation, arouses audience's emotional waves as well. In this novel, Morrison borrows these musical elements to display the black history in Jazz age and give the novel musical beauty, which expands and emphasizes the black's survival about politics, ethnic and gender etc.Chapter Three is about the influence of Magic Realism on Jazz. Morrison uses this literary type of Magic Realism, which causes tremendous and intense effect on the character portrait and the theme. Therefore, this thesis discusses the function and the impact on the characters portrait and multiple themes.In Chapter Three, the first part is about the character portrait with Magic Realism color. One of the obvious features in Magic Realism fictions is full of magic and fantasy, which sometimes makes people unbelievable but always reminds you of the truth. In Morrison's works, she is deeply influenced by the Magic Realism from the mystery and the mirror composite portrait of the characters, on which she bases her writing to form her own creative style. The second part is the need for her to express the theme through Magic Realism. Morrison intertwines her proficient writing skill with the Magic Realism to vividly represent the black's unexpressed living conditions in different historic stages. As an excellent member of the black writers, the black community and oral tradition, love and cultural identity become the multiple themes under the encouragement of the Magic Realism.The end of the thesis is to make a conclusion of the whole part, which stresses the important points and gives some evaluations about this works through the study of the Magic Realism used in Jazz. In a word, by the analysis of the Magic Realism, Morrison shows the black's living situation and traditional culture. She also points out that only set feet on the native land, face the history and draw lessons from it can the blacks gain the real freedom and get rid of the shadow of the slavery of this race for thousand years so as to achieve the spirit freedom and begin a new life. The profound meaning of Jazz will inspire the American society and even the whole world of the mankind.Toni Morrison cultivates herself in her national culture soil and combines the Magic Realism, the essence of the Latin America literature with the American black literature to form her own distinctive style, which pushes the black fictions to a new height. Therefore, her works that have the Magic Realism color reflect the national social history and reality. She is regarded as the'modern myth'woman writer due to her use of the Magic Realism.