The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable

182 Pages·2000·8.86 MB·English

by  Marc C. Conner

The Aesthetics of
TONI
MORRISON
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The Aesthetics of
TON I
MORRISON
SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE
Edited by
Marc Q Conner
University Press of Mississippi
Jackson
To my parents
www.upress.state.ms.us
Copyright © 2000 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
08 07 06 05 04 03 02 432
00
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The aesthetics of Toni Morrison : speaking the unspeakable / edited and with
an introduction by Marc C. Conner.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1*57806*284*5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57806-285-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1
. Morrison, Toni—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Afro-American aesthetics.
3. Aesthetics in literature. 4. Afro-American women in literature.
5. Narration (Rhetoric). I. Reyes-Conner, Marc Cameron, 1963-
PS3563.O8749 Z53 2000
813'.54—dc21
00-021405
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction:
Aesthetics and the African American Novel ix
"Aesthetic" and "Rapport" in Toni Morrison's Sula 3
Barbara Johnson
Language That Bears Witness:
The Black English Oral Tradition in the Works of Toni Morrison 12
Yvonne Atkinson
Toward the Limits of Mystery:
The Grotesque in Toni Morrison's Beloved 31
Susan Corey
From the Sublime to the Beautiful:
The Aesthetic Progression of Toni Morrison 49
MarcC. Conner
Toni Morrison's Beauty Formula 77
Katherine Stern
Contentions in the House of Chloe:
Morrison's Tar Baby 92
Maria DiBattista
Sensations of Loss 113
Michael Wood
Meditations on a Bird in the Hand:
Ethics and Aesthetics in a Parable by Toni Morrison 125
Cheryl Lester
Works Cited 139
Contributors 149
Index 151
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has been encouraged and advised by a number of people to whom
I am quite grateful. Arnold Rampersad, Michael Kowalewski, Eric Sundquist,
and Lee Mitchell each gave helpful guidance at various stages of this project.
The Works-in-Progress group at Washington and Lee University offered sub-
stantive comments on the introduction. Seetha Srinivasan and the Univer-
sity Press of Mississippi have been very supportive of this project, and helped
give the book its final shape. The libraries of Princeton University, the Uni-
versity of Notre Dame, the University of Virginia, and Washington and Lee
University have been consistently helpful. Generous support from the Glenn
Grant Foundation at Washington and Lee helped fund much of this project.
I am profoundly grateful to Laura Quinney, William Gleason, Henry Weinfield,
and Maria DiBattista, who have shaped my thinking on issues of aesthetics
and literary works in crucial ways. The best parts of this book certainly bear
their imprint. Finally, each of the contributors to this book has taught me so
much about Morrison's writing and its aesthetic implications. To be sure, with-
out their efforts this book would not exist.
Few writers are as aware of the debts owed to ancestors as is Toni Morrison.
This book is dedicated to my parents, and to the sense of family they have
bequeathed to me. And to my wife Barbara, and our two sons Matthew and
Noah, I offer grateful thanks for their support, patience, and steadying good
humor.
vii
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INTRODUCTION
Aesthetics and the African American Novel
MarcC. Conner
"For who shall describe beauty? What is it?"
W. E. B. Du Bois, "Criteria of Negro Art," 1926
"There is something irresistibly displaced and marginal about the now common and
limiting phrase 'aesthetic considerations.'"
Raymond Williams, Keywords, 1976
"The discussion of black literature in critical terms is unfailingly sociology and
almost never art criticism."
Toni Morrison, "Memory, Creation, Writing," 1984
In "The World and the Jug," Ralph Ellison's powerful meditation upon
the roles of aesthetics and politics in the African-American novel, Ellison
makes a key distinction: "The novel," he urges, "is always a public gesture,
though not necessarily a political one." Few American authors have been more
aware than Ellison of the unyielding connections between the work of art
and life as it is lived, that is, between the aesthetic and the political realms.
Indeed, Ellison insists that the African-American writer must engage "the orig-
inal American ideals of social and political justice." Yet Ellison's distinction
suggests that the novel, while necessarily political, is not only political, and
those who view the novel as only a political tool reduce it to something quite
other than a work of art. Such critics, Ellison asserts, "should abandon litera-
ture for politics" (Ellison, no, 112).
ix