Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

Michael K. Johnson

English 402: Toni Morrison and Tradition(s), Fall 2004

Course description

Meets

11:00–12:15/WF/Roberts 205

Syllabus

Required texts

  • Jan Furman (ed.), Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, A Casebook
  • Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987), The Bluest Eye (1970), Paradise (1998), Playing in the Dark (1992), Song of Solomon (1977)
  • Nancy J. Peterson (ed.), Toni Morrison: Critical and Theoretical Approaches
  • In addition to these books, each student will be required to read one additional novel by Morrison or another writer (see the list below) as part of their final project for the course.

Course description

This course will focus on the novels of contemporary African American author Toni Morrison. A winner of the Nobel prize in literature, Morrison creates richly intertextual novels that creatively and critically respond to a variety of sources, ranging from such literary forefathers and foremothers as William Faulkner and Zora Neale Hurston to the Bible, African folk tales, and African American folk culture and music. We will emphasize an exploration of Morrison's creative transformations of the diverse literary and cultural traditions that inform her work.

In his essay "Tradition and the Individual Talent," T. S. Eliot famously writes, "No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead." Among the questions we will ask is how do we place Morrison "among the dead"? When we speak of Morrison in "relation to the dead poets and artists," are we speaking of the same group of "the dead" as Eliot? If Morrison is part of a "literary tradition" (if her work can be compared to the work of the "dead" writers who preceded her), what feature or features of her books allow us to classify them as part of a "tradition," as members of a group of texts that share common points of reference, themes, or motifs? Within the institutional space of the university, as Mary Helen Washington writes, "tradition" is a word "that has so often been used to exclude or misrepresent women." If "tradition" has excluded black women's writing from the canon of American literature, can we use the idea of "tradition" to claim for Morrison a place within that canon? And, if so, should we?

Henry Louis Gates observes that, "Because tradition has served as a powerful heuristic term, we are always in danger of reifying it, treating it as a literary structure that exists independently of the narratives we construct about it, independently of the social practices of reading…That an ideology of tradition can tend toward a naive organicism, however, need not vitiate its value for the self-conscious critic. If it is a fiction, it remains a necessary fiction." As the idea of "literary tradition" continues to be central to the way literary studies organizes its field of knowledge, we may still find it useful to examine the relation of the individual artist to a larger group. However, any contemporary deployment of "tradition" as a critical tool will likely use the term in the plural—and speak of "traditions" that inform (and, in turn, are informed by) a writer's work. If we consider Morrison's work as having roots in Africa as well as America, then to consider her in relation to "the dead" has a particular resonance (which we will discuss), especially in the context of African spiritual beliefs. African tradition is also an oral rather than a written tradition, and thus we may find that placing Morrison's work in relation to African folk tales will reveal more about (or at least as much as) about her artistry as, say, a comparison to Paradise Lost.

First of all, we will think of Morrison in the context of two of the influential literary movements of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature, naturalism and modernism. We will also consider Morrison as a writer who knows not only the traditional canon of American literature but who also has a wide knowledge of African American literature, particularly black women writers. Finally, we will consider Morrison in relation to "non-literary" African American culture—religious beliefs, folklore, blues, jazz, etc. We will make connections between Morrison's work and these various "traditions" through class discussion and reading assignments. Through individual projects, students will explore the connections between Morrison and other writers independently.

Grades

Grades will be determined primarily by your performance on a long research paper (approximately 15 pages) that will place one of the Morrison novels read by the whole class in the larger context of either Morrison's other work (as exemplified by one of her other novels) or in the context of American and/or African American literary tradition (as exemplified by one of the novels chosen from the list below). Also contributing to your final course grade will be a final exam and a revision of your research paper, which will be submitted for publication in the anthology Reading Toni Morrison. The preparation for and submission of the paper for publication is a requirement for the course. The final research paper will account for 50% of your final course grade, the revision of that paper will account for 15%, the final exam for 20%. Such factors as attendance, participation, and performance on in-class presentations will contribute to the final 15% of the course grade.

Presentations

Each student will be responsible for one presentation to the class during the course of the semester. That presentation (approx. 15 minutes) will involve a report on each student's work-in-progress: the final research project due at the end of the semester. Each individual will present an overview of his or her project to the class.

Grading values

For papers, I assign letter grades that can be translated in terms of the following numerical values: C− (72), C (75), C+ (78). There are some exceptions to this pattern. An F corresponds to the numerical grade of 50. An assignment that is not completed will receive a grade of zero. Because the grade D− does not exist for me, a D grade will be assigned the value of 62. An A will be assigned the numerical value 100, an A− 95.

Accommodations

Please note that any student who needs accommodations in this course because of a disability should notify me at the beginning of the semester so that arrangements can be made.

Books on reserve

TBA

Final project

Please choose one of the following books as the topic for your in-class presentation and final research paper. I recommend spending an hour or so at Amazon.com looking at reviews and plot summaries of the books before making your decision. One or two copies of each book has been ordered through the UMF bookstore. Many of the books should be available in Mantor Library, via interlibrary loan, through purchase at one of the larger area bookstores, or through the internet. Because I want your projects to involve an independent and individual exploration of your topic, I will limit the number of students who can work with a particular book. A maximum of two students may work with each of the Morrison novels, and the novels by other writers will be limited to one student per book. A book will be assigned to the first person who requests it. Please email your choice to me by September 10 at the latest.

I will return your graded essay to you after the Thanksgiving break, and you will then have about a week to revise and edit the essay for submission to the anthology Reading Toni Morrison (see Call For Papers).

Novels by Toni Morrison

Novels by other writers