Read more
This collection of essays critically interrogates Toni Morrison's use of the Bible in her novels, examining the ways in which the author plays on the original text to raise issues of spirituality as it affects race, gender, and class. Ideal for courses on Morrison or on explorations of the intersection of religion and literature, this collection treats its topic with sophistication, considering "religion" in its broadest possible sense, and examining syncretic theologies as well as mainstream religions in its attempt to locate Morrison's work in a spiritual-theological nexus.
List of contents
Contents: Shirley A. Stave: Introduction - Beverly Foulks: Trial by Fire: The Theodicy of Toni Morrison in Sula - Nancy Berkowitz Bate: Toni Morrison's Beloved: Psalm and Sacrament - David Z. Wehner: To Live This Life Intensely and Well: The Rebirth of Milkman Dead in Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon - Beth Benedrix: Intimate Fatality: Song of Solomon and the Journey Home - Ágnes Surányi: The Bible as Intertext in Toni Morrison's Novels - Sharon Jessee: The «Female Revealer» in Beloved, Jazz and Paradise: Syncretic Spirituality in Toni Morrison's Trilogy - Benjamin Burr: Mythopoetic Syncretism in Paradise and the Deconstruction of Hospitality in Love - Anissa Janine Wardi: Jazz Funerals and Mourning Songs: Toni Morrison's Call to the Ancestors in Sula - Jennifer Terry: A New World Religion? Creolisation and Candomblé in Toni Morrison's Paradise - Shirley A. Stave: The Master's Tools: Morrison's Paradise and the Problem of Christianity - Rebecca Degler: Ritual and «Other» Religions in The Bluest Eye.
About the author
The Editor: Shirley A. Stave received her B.A. in English (speech/theater) from Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota, and her Ph.D. in English from University of Minnesota. She is the author of The Decline of the Goddess: Nature, Culture, and Women in Thomas Hardy¿s Fiction (1995), co-author of Living Witchcraft: A Contemporary American Coven (1994), and editor of Gloria Naylor: Strategy and Technique, Magic and Myth (2001).
