Unread letters, sublime gifts : the slave sublime in selcected Toni Morrison novels

摘要

This thesis demonstrates the ways in which Toni Morrison incorporates the non-linguisticudcode of the slave sublime, a term coined by Paul Gilroy in his 1993 study The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, through the use of music, dance, colors,udand scars within A Mercy, Beloved, and Jazz. The slave sublime enables her characters toudcreate solidarity and foster healing from the traumatic past of slavery and its aftermath forudthemselves as well as the African-American community without reinforcing the hegemonic language. Highlighting the usage and function of the slave sublime in Morrison's novels may shed light on the way in which contemporary African-American novelists struggle with the tension between writing in the hegemonic language that is saturated with a history of oppression of the people they seek to reconstruct and the desire to tell these stories that defy direct representation.