On The Realization Of Defamiliarization In Toni Morrison’s A Mercy

As a principal concept contributed by the Russian Formalist movement in the seconddecade of the twentieth century, defamiliarization was first put forward by Russian FormalistVictor Shklovsky in his essay “Art as Technique” in1917, which was described by BorisEichenbaum as “a kind of manifesto of the Formalist Method.”Just as implied from the name, to “defamiliarize” means to “make strange”. VictorShklovsky advocates in the essay “Art as Technique” that “art exists that one may recover thesensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of artis to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. Thetechnique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult, to increase thedifficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end initself and must be prolonged.”(Shklovsky9) That is the keynote of defamiliarization. ForShklovsky, art should be taken as a device to counter the deadening effect of habit andconvention by investing the familiar with strangeness and thereby deautomatizing perception.From this passage, we can get the answers of a series of important questions, such as the aimand process of the art. What is art? Defamiliarization is the key for these questions.Toni Morrison (1931-) can be regarded as one of the leading writers in the world. Herlatest novel A Mercy (2008) is received considerable acclaim. In A Mercy, Toni Morrison, theauthor of the book，exhibits fully her spirit of anti-tradition in narration，language andbecomes an epoch-making literary master with her unique technique and style. Based ontextual analysis，this thesis intends to explore how the effect of defamiliarization has beenachieved in Toni Morrison’s A Mercy.Following a brief introduction to Toni Morrison and the research work is the main bodyof the thesis contains three chapters: In Chapter One, this thesis firstly gives a brief introduction to the defamiliarizationtheory, and looks back upon origin and development of this theory and then describes thefeasibility of applying defamiliarization to A Mercy.In Chapter Two, the present writer employs two aspects, narrative strategies andlanguage, to analyze how defamiliarization theory is presented in this novel. In A Mercy, thedislocated time, the different focalizations and the variable narrative discourses violate thelimitations of the traditional paradigm for plot-development. And the usage of metaphor andimagery in language gives the whole language a strong infectious power. They all help toprolong the reader’s aesthetic experience. The effect of defamiliarization in Morrison’s AMercy is heightened.Chapter Three is intended to discuss the esthetic effect of the realization ofdefamiliarization in A Mercy. This chapter explores deeply the uniqueness of the works andthe aesthetic responses of the reader.Based on the analysis of the above three chapters, the present writer concludes that ToniMorrison has managed to endow her novel with singularity and originality by adoptingvarious techniques of defamiliarization. All the techniques of defamiliarization strengthen thedifficulty of understanding and prolong readers’ perception and enable readers to acquire theartistic perception.