A Dialogic Reading Of Song Of Solomon

Song of Solomon is Morrison's third novel which is well received and widely reviewed. It remains a key text in the corpus of Morrison's work and in the literary traditions of which it is a part.The presence of voice is generally regarded as the controlling force throughout a work. Bakhtin's dialogics and Henry Louis Gates'speculation on double-voiced texts offer us new ways of reading and theorizing about African American texts that are pertinent to understanding how Morrison uses language in Song of Solomon.The research paper focuses on "A Dialogic Reading of Song of Solomon", trying to hear the text with fresh ears, to listen to the multiple voices that give the community Morrison creates its unique identity. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin's Dialogic Theory and Henry Louis Gates'concept of double-voiced discourse. Chapter Two analyzes the dialogue between reader and text in Song of Solomon, that is, to hear multiple voices which Morrison creates to communicate with the reader. Chapter Three analyzes the dialogue between author and protagonists to hear the double-voiced discourse in the text. Chapter Four analyzes the dialogue between characters in the text where one character is both aware of his or her own voice and also able to hear, actively listen to, and participate in dialogue with another.The dialogic reading enables us to read beyond the signs in the text fo-hear the voices and ideologies embedded within those signs. It calls attention to the relationship between the text and the reader, a relationship that reiterates Morrison's own narrative intentions. It also encourages us to question Western notions of autonomy and individuality and to consider how Morrison's revised notions of community offer us new ways to read black texts and new ways to hear and respond to the multivocality that has made black people who they are and who they are becoming.