"The variety in which they come" : the presence and function of African traditional religions in Toni Morrison's The bluest eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved

Abstract

This project focuses on three areas of interest: scholarship of appropriation, or that which examines Toni Morrison's fiction through predominantly Western models; scholarship of reappropriation; and the presence and function of African traditional religions and cultural practices in Morrison's "The Bluest Eye," "Sula," "Song of Solomon," and "Beloved." I explore each area, but I am most concerned with the latter, particularly how the use of such traditions and practices acts as both macro- and micro-narrative strategies as well as indications of the author's own literary progression. Throughout this project I rely on the cultural sources to which Morrison and her character subscribe, namely communal education and village literature, so as to argue that Morrison introduces readers and scholars to an African religious framework for her novels, one upon which she builds her oeuvre. The success of any critical work on Morrison's fiction, then, depends largely on how scholars deal with this framework.