Subversion And Containment Of Male Power In Song Of Solomon

Toni Morrison is the first black woman writer who is granted the Nobel Prize in American literature. She wrote a total of ten novels from 1970 to 2012, which express her concern with black people, the identity and the traditional culture of black Americans. Among all these works, Song of Solomon is the only one that has a black male as the protagonist. This novel established her status in American literary world.Scholars at home and abroad analyse Song of Solomon from different perspectives, and the research achievements are abundant. However, there have been few journal articles about the power relations contained in the novel. Thus, this thesis utilizes power, subversion and containment, the three important terms of New Historicism, to analyze the themes of this novel, thus enabling the readers to have a brand new understanding of this novel.Through analysing how power is operated in the Song of Solomon, this thesis attempts to reveal how the disadvantaged groups try to subvert the power of the black male power. As the outcome of power, subversion is doomed to be contained by the mainstream discourse.