Subversion And Reconstruction Through Intertextuality

The African American female writer Toni Morrison has been one of the most influential writers among the world.Possessing of double cultural identities,she is not only familiar with the black culture,but also has been influenced by the western classics deeply.A Mercy is her ninth novel and it also receives a lot of attention since Morrison has won the Nobel Prize.Morrison for the first time has set the novel’s background in the 17th century of America when the slavery system was still in its infancy.The novel’s feminism,historical reconstructions,character’s traumas and so on have been studied by critics both at home and abroad thoroughly.In comparison,the intertextuality in this novel hasn’t been studied systematically.Therefore,this paper chooses to study and reinterpret A Mercy from the perspective of intertextuality.The whole paper consists of three main sections.The first section centers on introduction,and two chapters consist of that.In chapter one,this paper reviews the life and literature career of Toni Morrison briefly and summarizes the plot of A Mercy firstly,then presents the literature review of the novel both at home and abroad,and the originality and framework of this thesis.Chapter two mainly focuses on the introduction of this paper’s theoretical basis:intertextuality.Firstly,it introduces the origin of the intertextuality,then it makes the elaboration of the two main branches of intertextuality:Kristeva’s broad sense intertextuality and narrow sense intertextuality put forward by Genette.On the one hand,researchers advocating broad sense intertextuality declare that text research cannot be limited to the text itself.No text is isolated,and social values or cultural attitude must influence its meaning conveyed to the public overtly or implicitly;on the other hand,scholars supporting narrow sense intertextuality insist that intertextual researches should be narrowed down to the texts and used only to analyze concrete textual relations.On the basis of these,it’s feasible to interpret A Mercy both from the broad and narrow sense of intertextuality.At the end of the chapter,this thesis summarizes the Morrison ’s works’ intertextual features.The main body part consists of three chapters.In chapter three,it analyzes A Mercy from the broad sense intertextuality.In the novel,Morrison has weaved several real historical incidents into the plot.By revisiting the American past from the non-white perspective,Morrison challenges to the white so-called superior and civilized history.By resonating with the Bacon’s Rebellion in history,Morrison exposes that the so-called white superiority actually builds upon the exclusion and marginalization of the Other,which in essence is narrow-minded and biased.By echoing with the Salem Witch Trials,Morrison discloses the hypocritical attitude of the white that they on the surface claimed to salvage those "uncivilized",while in fact they degenerated and demonized those non-white so as to maintain their myth of white supremacy.The Middle Passage and the Smallpox Blanket Incident referred in the novel can also be regarded as Morrison’s apparent challenges to the civilized,decent image of the white.Chapter four would analyze the intertextual relations between A Mercy and several western classics from the perspective of narrow sense intertextuality,focusing on the employment of intertextual techniques of allusion and parody in the novel.Through alluding to the biblical scenes and Paradise Lost,Morrison exposes the greedy and evil nature of the white colonial enterprises.By parodying of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the plot of the Book of Revelation,the strict social hierarchy has been challenged and the hypocrisy of the settlers has been revealed.Chapter five mainly discusses the meaning of intertextual analysis of A Mercy.By disclosing the narrowness and hypocrisy of the white,Morrison has reconstructed the colored identity and culture by denying the negative stereotypes in the white discourses in A Mercy.The third part is the conclusion part.First of all,it summarizes the main body of the paper,revealing the feasibility of this thesis.After the interpretation of A Mercy from the perspective of intertextuality,readers can get to know the real living plight of the colored people in American history,questioning the authority of the white culture and reconstructing the the colored identity and culture in contrast to the white discourses,which helps the colored get rid of self-loathing and self-hatred and reclaim their national confidence.