349,240 research outputs found
Toni Morrison reads her work
No full textRecorded in Ithaca, NY by Cornell University., Speaker(s): Author, professor at Howard University, Cornell alumnus., Reading and Lecture.Toni Morrison gives a talk entitled, A Matter of Fiction, which discusses why people write and read fiction, specifically relating her own motivations. Morrison focuses on the preservation of the oral tradition as her primary motivation.1_xgip1xp
Transforming America : Toni Morrison and classical tradition
No full textThis thesis examines a significant but little-studied feature of Toni Morrison's
work: her ambivalent engagement with classical tradition. Analysing all eight
novels. it argues that her allusiveness to the cultural practices of Ancient Greece
and Rome is fundamental to her political project. Illuminating hegemonic
America's consistent recourse to the classical world in the construction of its
identity, I expand on prior scholarship by reading Morrison's own revisionary
classicism as a subversion of dominant US culture. My three-part study
examines the way her deployment of Graeco-Roman tradition destabilizes
mythologies of the American Dream, prevailing narratives of America's
history, and national ideologies of purity. Part I shows that Morrison enlists
tragic conventions to problematize the Dream's central tenets of upward
mobility, progress and freedom. It argues that while her engagement with Greek
choric models effects her refutation of individualism, it is her later novels'
rejection of a wholly catastrophic vision that enables her to avoid reinscribing
the Dream. Part II demonstrates that it is through her classical allusiveness that
Morrison rewrites American history. Her multiply-resonant echoes of the epic,
pastoral and tragic traditions that have consistently informed the dominant
culture's justifications for and representations of its actions enable her
reconfiguration of colonization, of the foundation of the new nation, of slavery
and its aftermath and of the Civil Rights Movement. Part III illuminates how
the author uses the discourse of pollution or miasma to challenge
Enlightenment-derived valorizations of racial purity and to expose the practices
of scapegoating and revenge as flawed means to moral purity. Her interest in
the hegemonic fabrication of classical tradition as itself a pure and purifying
force is matched by her insistence on that tradition's African elements, and thus
on its potent impurity. Her own radical classicism, therefore, is central to the
transformation of America that her novels envision
The Destruction of Paradise: Exploring Toni Morrison?s A Mercy and John Milton?s Paradise Lost
No full textDespite overwhelming comparisons between the work of Pulitzer Prize winning author, Toni Morrison and William Faulkner, Morrison?s work filled with many Christian motifs and concepts which enter into direct conversation with John Milton?s Paradise Lost. In her most recent novel, A Mercy, published in 2008, Morrison reexamines the ideas of creation, heaven, hell, and what it means to build a paradise. The novel is set in 1680s America where the institution of slavery corrupts any possibility for paradise. The fall of all of the characters mimics that of Milton?s Adam and Eve, yet Morrison distorts the original story as they do not fall away from God, but from their true selves. Morrison explores the meaning of mercy as a giving of oneself with no intention of personal gain, but unlike Milton, Morrison values human mercy over divine mercy as it is an act which is highly-developed, complex, and often inexplicable
A politics of conversion: nihilism and love in Toni Morrison's fiction
No full textTese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras.O estudo Uma Política de Conversão: Niilismo e Amor na Ficção de Toni Morrison começa com a idéia de que a Literatura Afro-Americana apresenta um sentido de auto-reflexividade e hibridismo, através do qual autobiografia dialoga com romance, o espiritual se funde com o político. A partir deste traço dialógico a auto-reflexividade é politicamente estabelecida entre niilismo e amor. Na política de conversão, o estudo analisa as formas como mulheres negras, individualmente ou em grupo, fogem da escravidão para a liberdade, avançam da individualidade para a coletividade, ou substituem niilismo por amor. Metodologicamente o estudo apresenta sete capítulos. O primeiro discute os aspectos dialógicos que ilustram as conexões entre narrativas espirituais, de escravos e ficção, entre espiritualidade e política. O segundo examina o diálogo entre a conversão, pregação pública e formação da comunidade em Diário e Experiências Religiosas de Lee. O capítulo sugere que ao afirmar espiritualidade e humanidade a narradora abre profundo espaço para a mulher negra reclamar direitos civis. O terceiro discute o diálogo no interior da política de conversão entre narrativa de escravos e ficção. Este diálogo lida com niilismo e amor em Incidentes de Jacobs e Amada, Sula e O Olho Mais Azul de Morrison. Para a análise de niilismo e amor valores individuais e coletivos são considerados em relação a cinco aspectos: ambiente e agente antagonistas, agente de apoio, propósito da personagem e resultado alcançado. É visível, no estudo, o apoio que certas mulheres recebem de suas comunidades para contra-atacar antagonistas. O apoio nem sempre resulta na superação do niilismo e, por isso, derrota temporária pode ocorrer antes que elas sejam reintegradas à comunidade, como acontece com Linda Brent. O quarto capítulo examina as fraquezas e as energias da política da conversão e a reintegração de Sethe Suggs à comunidade de Bluestone Road. O quinto avalia como a comunidade de Bottom tenta controlar a individualidade de Sula Peace e como um grupo de mulheres lideradas por Nel Wrights consegue resgatar o espírito de independência da heroína. O sexto mostra como a política da conversão das mulheres de Lorain é incapaz de garantir a saúde mental de Pecola Breedlove, mas consegue criar um papel mais consistente para o grupo. No sétimo, a conclusão examina da relação dialética entre niilismo e amor ou auto-amor nas experiências dos indivíduos e dos grupos. O estudo sugere que em Incidentes a busca de Linda Brent por liberdade envolve elementos de autodestruição e de autoempoderamento. Da mesma maneira, o estudo conclui que em Amada o amor que Sethe Suggs tem para as suas crianças mata a própria filha, enfatizando, assim, o desejo de livrá-la da escravidão. Igualmente em Sula, a individualidade de Sula Peace não apenas limita, mas também expande as experiências do grupo, levando-o à emancipação. Finalmente, em O Olho Mais Azul a luta de Pecola Breedlove por amor e beleza reflete auto-ódio ao mesmo tempo em que reconstrói a auto-apreciação de toda a comunidade
C. D. Morrison & Co.'s general directory of the city of Sherman for ...
No full textA directory of businesses in Sherman, Texas in 1878 that includes advertisements
Reading/Writing the most wretched business : Toni Morrison s A Mercy
No full textThe epilogue of Toni Morrison s A Mercy (2008) is narrated by the teenage character-narrator Florens mother. Though addressed to her daughter, the mother s words are heard/read only by the reader, who is left with the (merciful?) gift of understanding and reinterpreting the very act that is at the center of the novel. The picture (s)he shapes, the telling (s)he hears (161), are conditioned by Florens narration the affective lens through which the world (161) and the narrative are to be read. The reader s legitimacy is recognized and rewarded at the very end of A Mer-cy. Indeed, the mother s account, conjured up by Florens, is staged as an imaginary reconciliation, arising from the reading itself, as well as from the reader s affective, aesthetic desire for such reconciliation
William Morrison Residence, letter files, 1906
No full textThis set of images describe the work done for the construction of a house commissioned by W. W. Morrison, and designed by George S. Mills, an architect working in Toledo. The commission number for this job was 1364, the house was commissioned in 1906 and constructed in 1907 at 2044 Collingwood Avenue (now Collingwood Boulevard)
Morrison R. Waite photograph
No full textThis image is a photograph of a drawing of Morrison R. Waite, 1890. The portrait depicts Waite (1816-1888) as a dignified older man wearing his jurist's robe. At the bottom of the portrait is a handwritten signature ("M.R. Waite") and near the subject's ringed left hand is the artist's signature ("Max Rosenthal, Phila [illegible] 90").
Waite to the left his home state of Connecticut to practice law in northwestern Ohio. He ran twice unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and spent one term in the state legislature. Waite later declined a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court.
In 1871, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant selected Waite to help settle claims with Great Britain that arose from the American Civil War. Waite's legal skills helped the United States obtain almost $16 million from Great Britain for that nation's support of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Upon returning to the United States, Waite participated in the Ohio Constitutional Convention of 1873 and was selected to be the convention's president. While serving at the Constitutional Convention, Waite received word that President Grant had nominated him to be Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Waite served as chief justice for the next fifteen years.
Max Rosenthal (1833-1918) was a painter, lithographer, etcher, and draftsman born in Russian Poland, He emigrated to the U.S. in 1849. He is one of four Rosenthal brothers who founded a lithographic printing company in Philadelphia. Max was the firm’s primary artist. He is believed to have illustrated some of the earliest books produced in the U.S. that used the chromolithograph process. During his career he produced hundreds of portraits of eminent Americans and Britons. His son, Albert Rosenthal, was also a noted artist
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