The Synthesis Of Afro-and Euro-American Literary Practices In Beloved

Toni Morrison is a prominent Afro-American writer whose works are characterized by diverse writing techniques, profound thematic subjects, and unique personal style rich with cultural temperament of the Blacks. She highlights the salient characteristics of Afro-American literature. Meanwhile, the modern or post-modern Euro-American writing techniques are quite obvious in her novels. Morrison perfectly incorporates the two aspects together, which helps to establish her great fame in world literature. This thesis makes an analysis of the Afro-American features and the Euro-American techniques in Morrison's masterpiece Beloved to show her great skill in the synthesis of the two.The thesis first introduces the life and achievements of Morrison and her most well-accepted novel Beloved. Then a brief review of the history and characteristics of Afro-American literature and those of Euro-American literature is given. With these backgrounds, Morrison's efforts in writing Black novels with Euro-American model are revealed.Beloved has its deep roots in the fertile soil of African-American culture. There are several elements that are directly or indirectly related to the characteristics of Black art. African Americans have maintained a lively and widespread verbal art tradition. Morrison actively adopts the oral forms, especially the music, the storytelling tradition and the poetic language. Morrison is fully aware of the importance of folklore. In Beloved, many folkloric ideas such as the Afro-American spirituality, cosmology, naming tradition and importance of community are blended in the story. By making her novel oral and by using Afro-American folklore, Morrison successfully makes Beloved a Black novel.Morrison's inheritance of Euro-American literature plays a great role in forming the uniqueness of her writing. Morrison, as a contemporary writer, cannot totally escape the influence of current Euro-American cultural and literary practices; rather, she actively absorbs them. She boldly experiments many techniques in Beloved, such as flexible focalization, multiplicity of voices, fragmented narrative time, stream of consciousness, interior monologue and reader-oriented writing strategies. This experimentation helps Morrison explore the physical and psychological damages slavery had inflicted on the ex-slaves and enables her to develop the traditional slave narrative and give new glamour to it.It is the combination of the Afro-American tradition and the Euro-American literary practice that gives Beloved inexhaustible glamour. By exploring the features of Afro-American forms or tradition and current Euro-American literary practice and their perfect synthesis in Beloved, the author intends to show Morrison's superb writing skills. She successfully combines the above two different literary traditions without any sense of piecing them together stiffly. This explains, at least partly, the reason why Morrison enjoys such great fame in the literary circle.