122,354 research outputs found
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
Papers of John Gordon Morrison
No full textThis record was harvested from a previous catalogue system and will be withdrawn in 2025. Information in this record may be superseded or incomplete. Visit this record in UMA's new catalogue at: https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/66094Correspondence with friends, in particular David Martin, and bodies such as the Literature Board of the Australia Council, articles by and about Morrison; book reviews by Morrison. c. 1968-1993.112040
Acquisition: [1995.0016] "Papers of John Gordon Morrison
Morrison, D G, 2788084
No full textThis record was harvested from a previous catalogue system and will be withdrawn in 2025. Information in this record may be superseded or incomplete. Visit this record in UMA's new catalogue at: https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/406265Surname: MORRISON. Given Name(s) or Initials: D G. Military Service Number or Last Known Location: 2788084. Missing, Wounded and Prisoner of War Enquiry Card Index Number: SEA-3937.247353
Item: [2016.0049.38542] "Morrison, D G, 2788084
Morrison, A R G, [No Service Number]
No full textThis record was harvested from a previous catalogue system and will be withdrawn in 2025. Information in this record may be superseded or incomplete. Visit this record in UMA's new catalogue at: https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/406268Surname: MORRISON. Given Name(s) or Initials: A R G. Military Service Number or Last Known Location: [No Registration Number]. Missing, Wounded and Prisoner of War Enquiry Card Index Number: 28370.247358
Item: [2016.0049.38545] "Morrison, A R G, [No Service Number]
Morrison, W G, [No Service Number]
No full textThis record was harvested from a previous catalogue system and will be withdrawn in 2025. Information in this record may be superseded or incomplete. Visit this record in UMA's new catalogue at: https://archives.library.unimelb.edu.au/nodes/view/406278Surname: MORRISON. Given Name(s) or Initials: W G. Military Service Number or Last Known Location: [No Registration Number]. Missing, Wounded and Prisoner of War Enquiry Card Index Number: 11358.247378
Item: [2016.0049.38555] "Morrison, W G, [No Service Number]
O. W. Morrison, G. S. Business Card
No full textCard: O. W. Morrison, G. S., representing the sons and daughters of Jacob of Florida and America, Inc. No date given
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