A Perfect Integration Of American Mainstream Literature And American Black Literature

Tcni Morrison is a prominent black writer who successfully achieved in her writing a perfect integration of American mainstream literature and American black literature. Her works are characterized by diverse writing techniques, profound thematic subjects, and unique personal style rich with cultural temperament of the blacks'. This paper makes an analysis of the themes, techniques, characters, linguistic features etc. of her masterpiece Beloved to interpret how she attained such integration.The paper first reviews briefly the history of American literature and that of American black literature and the relationship between them. The history of American black literature from its "slave narratives" in the early days, the "Harlem Renaissance" in 1920s to the "Protest Novel" in 1930s is stressed, for Morrison is another eminent writer in the black literary world after Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. After winning many important awards in American literary arena, she was further awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. Her brilliant creation has propelled greatly the development of both American literature and American black literature and promoted them to a new level.After the introduction of Morrison's life and the novel Beloved, the paper focuses on the reasons for her becoming outstanding among numerous literary talents. She not only inherited the writing techniques and literary ideologies of some great masters in American mainstream literature like Faulkner andHemingway, but also absorbed the essence of American black culture and literature like the unique cosmology, morality, ballads etc. Based on the analyses of these two aspects together with the study of the text of Beloved, a conclusion can be drawn: with her polished techniques inherited from the great masters in the American mainstream literary field and her unique personal style rooted deeply in American black culture and literature, Toni Morrison is worthy of all the honor and awards granted to her.