The Analysis Of Toni Morrison's Paradise From The Perspective Of New Historicism

As the first novel published after Toni Morrison was awarded the Novel Prize, Paradise (1997) has received increasing critical attention because of its rich thematic concerns. While critical response to this novel remains mixed and divergent, attempts at mining its rich themes continues, with critical approaches varying from Feminism, Psychoanalytic Criticism to mythos-archetypical criticism.This paper holds that this novel is a double-text one because behind Paradise that is itself a text, there exists another oral communal historiography text running through Paradise. Based on this assumption, it then seeks to analyze the New Historicists'tendency of this novel by drawing from the insights from Louis Montrose's notion of "the historicity of text and textuality of history". In so far as "the textuality of history" is concerned, there is hardly any ready access to the "real" history since historical facts are changing with the time and place and have always been subject to the preservation and compilation—always already textualized. People construct the histories according to their own needs. The histories constructed by the Ruby's leaders are greatly different from those of the marginalized people's. With regards to "the historicity of texts", texts are social products but they also have the power of shaping history. The oral communal historiography text is affected by the slavery and the Afro-American Jeremiad as well; at the same time, it has the power to strengthen the absolute ruling of the Ruby's leaders, but actually it prevents the development of black community. Paradise as a text, is also the products of American social history and the author's consciousness; and as one among Morrison's historical trilogy, it has forwarded a reasonable suggestion about the building of black community and issue warning to America as a whole against blind arrogance and extreme exclusionalism.