CROSSING THE BRIDGE: THE GREAT MOTHER IN SELECTED NOVELS OF TONI MORRISON, PAULE MARSHALL, SIMONE SCHWARZ-BART, AND MARIAMA BA (MYTHOLOGY, BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE, FOLKLORE, FRANCOPHONE, GUADELOUPE, SENEGAL, WOMEN)

This present study is a cross-cultural literary analysis of the meaning of the Great Mother in four novels by contemporary Black women writers. The Introduction examines the representation of the Great Mother in a literary and ethnographic context. The archetype has a range and combination of attributes. By viewing the archetype in Africa and the New World, this study explores the comparative nature of the novels as viewed from myth, ritual, symbolism, and folk- lore. The focal premises, on which this study is based, are those of Mircea Eliade, Victor Turner, Isidore Okpewho, and Erich Neumann.;Chapter III explores the nature of myth and symbolism in a Carib- bean setting as it is depicted in Simone Schwarz-Bart's novel, Pluie et vent sur Telumee Miracle. Chapter IV gives an analysis of the new concerns of the Great Mother in contemporary Africa with Mariama Ba's Une si longue lettre. Ba's epistolary novel is a model story of an African woman living in a transitional society. The chapter also focuses on epistolary writing and its implications.;The conclusion of this study brings together myth, ritual, sym- bolism, and folklore as a metaphoric bridge by which these repre- sentative works are connected. In crossing the bridge from the Past to contemporary realities, we see that the Great Mother still exists but with a complexity which reflects cultural continuities as well as new roles for women of color in the diaspora and in Africa.;Chapter I aims to establish an image of the archetype in the African diaspora. Paradoxically, the central character in Toni Morrison's Tar Baby lacks the qualities of the archetype. Tar Baby implies that the presence of the Great Mother is needed to hold Black culture together. Chapter II examines how Paule Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow directly and explicitly presents Africa in the diaspora. The significance of the Great Mother is represented by a female ancestor. The analysis is concerned with how the novel's structure adheres to the ritual of death and rebirth as a modality for reestablishing spiritual bridges to Africa.