Beloved: Critique with New Historicism

1738 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: beloved by toni morrison critical analysis jstor

Beloved is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel written by Toni Morrison and published in 1987. The story follows Sethe as she attempts to make peace with her present (for her, post Civil War America) and her past as a former slave and the atrocities she suffered at the hands of the "benevolent" Gardner family. Information given to the readers from different perspectives, multiple characters, and various time periods allows her audience to piece together the history of the family, their lives, as well as provide insight into slavery and the aftermath as a whole. The characters feel as though they discover more and more as the novel passes in time, just as history unfolds. Critically this novel is recognized as one of the greatest works on the subject of slavery's impact on the slaves, the owners, the past, and America's future. In this analysis of Beloved, the characteristics of new historicism will be used to evaluate this literary piece.
New Historicism is a literary critique theory founded primarily by Stephen Greenblatt in the early 1980s. What began as a critique by Greenblatt of Shakespearean works became an improved theory of criticism. The basis of this theory is the opposite of historicism; new historicism critiques a work not only during the time period in which it takes place but also within the context of the time period it was written. In other words, there is no objectivity. When applying new historicism to Beloved, there are certain characteristics that may be applied, including: whether or not there is a sense of mourning, healing, and redemption in the story, if the events that occur in the novel reflect the times in which the author lived, if the meanings of words and the context have changed or remained s...

... middle of paper ...

...oved and the Moniyhan Report." Modern Language Association 111.3 (1996): 408-20. JSTOR. Web. 11 June 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/463165.

Brizee, Allen, and J C. Tompkins. "New Historicism, Cultural Studies (1980s-present)." Prudue
Online Writing Lab. Purdue University, 16 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/722/09/.

Changizi, Parisa, and Parvin Ghasemi. "A Foucauldian Reading of Toni Morrison’s Beloved." Journal of Research in Peace, Gender and Development 2.1 (2012): 001-05. Print.

Kaes, Anton. "New Historicism: Writing Literary History in the Postmodern Era." Monatshefte 84.2 (1992): 148-58. Web. 10 Nov. 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30161347.

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. 2nd ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Print.

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. 5th ed. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. 215-17. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Themes And Cruelty In Toni Morrison's Beloved

    1274 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Where does discipline end? Where does cruelty begin? Somewhere between these, thousands of children inhabit a voiceless hell” (Francois Mauriac, Brainyquote 2016). These statements posed by French novelist Francois Mauriac can be applied to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. The novel centers around Sethe, a former African American slave, who lives in rural Cincinnati, Ohio with her daughter named Denver. As the plot progresses, Sethe is confronted with elements of her haunting past: traumatic experiences from her life as a slave, her daunting escape, and the measures she took to keep her family safe from her hellish owner plague Sethe into the present and force her to come to terms with the past. A definitive theme

    Read More

  • Walter Lee and Manhood in A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

    744 Words  | 2 Pages

    Forum 19.4 (Winter 1985): 160-162. Rpt. inTwentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J. Trudeau. Vol. 192. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison and Beloved

    2628 Words  | 6 Pages

    Gates, Henry Louis and Appiah, K. A.  (eds.).  Toni Morrison:  Critical Perspectives Past and Present.  New York, Amistad, 1993.

    Read More

  • The Role of Storytelling in The Things They Carried

    2570 Words  | 6 Pages

    Heberle, Mark. "Contemporary Literary Criticism." O'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried. Vol. 74. New York, 2001. 312.

    Read More

  • Charles Bukowksi Analysis

    577 Words  | 2 Pages

    New Historicism is used to analyze the effects of an author’s culture and political climate, and how society influences the author, and the author’s effect on society. Charles Bukowksi was somewhat of an enigma for the literary world of poetry: a hard-drinking, tough-talking, cynical womanizer, his poems typically revolved around easy women, sex, alcohol, cigarettes, and misfortunes of his fellow man.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's Use Of Narrative Voice In Beloved

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel Beloved, the past lingers on. The novel reveals to readers the terrors of slavery and how even after slavery had ended, its legacy drove people to commit horrific actions. This truth demonstrates how the past stays with us, especially in the case of Sethe and Paul D. The story focuses on previous slaves Paul D and Sethe, as well as Sethe’s daughters Denver and Beloved, who are all troubled by the past. Although both Paul D and Sethe are now free they are chained to the unwanted memories of Sweet Home and those that precede their departure from it. The memories of the horrific past manifest themselves physically as Beloved, causing greater pains that are hard to leave behind and affect the present. In the scene soon after Beloved arrives at 124 Bluestone, Sethe's conversation with Paul D typifies Morrison’s theme of how the past is really the present as well. Morrison is able to show this theme of past and present as one through her metaphors and use of omniscient narration.

    Read More

  • Motherhood Under Slavery in Tony Morrison’s Beloved

    3170 Words  | 7 Pages

    Wyatt, Jean. “Body to the Word: The Maternal Symbolic in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” PMLA, Vol. 108, No.3 (May, 1993): 474-488. JSTOR. Web. 27. Oct. 2015.

    Read More

  • Life During the 1950s in America

    1948 Words  | 4 Pages

    164-69. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 341. Detroit: Gale, 2013.Artemis Literary Sources. Web. 5 May 2014.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison

    1926 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mobley, Marilyn Sanders. “ Toni Morrison.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith, and Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.508-510.

    Read More

  • Character of Beloved in Toni Morrison's Beloved

    2498 Words  | 5 Pages

    Perhaps one of the most important issues in Toni Morrison's award-winning novel Beloved is Morrison's intentional diversity of possible interpretations. However the text is looked at and analyzed, it is the variety of these multiple meanings that confounds any simple interpretation and gives the novel the complexity. The debate rages on over many topics, but one issue of central and basic importance to the understanding of the novel is defining the different possibilities for interpreting the title character. As Robert Broad recognizes, "the question, "Who the hell is Beloved?" must haunt the reader of the novel," and the reader must come to some basic understanding of her character to appreciate the difficult stream of consciousness sections (Broad 189). But there may be no "basic" understanding available of Beloved, for she is a character that ostensibly refuses any single identity, either literal or symbolic.

    Read More

  • Religion in "Beloved"

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, explores the physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering that was brought on by slavery. Several critical works recognize that Morrison incorporates aspects of traditional African religions and to Christianity to depict the anguish slavery placed not only on her characters, but other enslaved African Americans. This review of literature will explore three different scholarly articles that exemplifies how Morrison successfully uses African religions and Christianity to depict the story of how slavery affected the characters’ lives in the novel, even after their emancipation from slavery.

    Read More

  • Use of Violence in Beloved by Toni Morrison

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    As much as society does not want to admit, violence serves as a form of entertainment. In media today, violence typically has no meaning. Literature, movies, and music, saturated with violence, enter the homes of millions everyday. On the other hand, in Beloved, a novel by Toni Morrison, violence contributes greatly to the overall work. The story takes place during the age of the enslavement of African-Americans for rural labor in plantations. Sethe, the proud and noble protagonist, has suffered a great deal at the hand of schoolteacher. The unfortunate and seemingly inevitable events that occur in her life, fraught with violence and heartache, tug at the reader’s heart-strings. The wrongdoings Sethe endures are significant to the meaning of the novel.

    Read More

  • Universal Themes in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

    969 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.

    Read More

  • The Importance of the Past in Toni Morrison's Beloved

    2275 Words  | 5 Pages

    2 Marcus, Brad.  "Diamond Back."  Panel discusses Toni Morrison's Beloved.  04 Dec. 1998.  Diamond Back Newspaper .  18. Oct. 2001.  <http://www.inform.umd.edu/News/Diamondback/1998-editions/12-Dec/04-Friday/News7.htm>.

    Read More

  • Confronting the Past, Living the Present, and Enjoying the Future in Toni Morrison's "Beloved"

    1337 Words  | 3 Pages

    So often, the old adage, "History always repeats itself," rings true due to a failure to truly confront the past, especially when the memory of a period of time sparks profoundly negative emotions ranging from anguish to anger. However, danger lies in failing to recognize history or in the inability to reconcile the mistakes of the past. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the relationship between the past, present and future. Because the horrors of slavery cause so much pain for slaves who endured physical abuse as well as psychological and emotional hardships, former slaves may try to block out the pain, failing to reconcile with their past. However, when Sethe, one of the novel's central characters fails to confront her personal history she still appears plagued by guilt and pain, thus demonstrating its unavoidability. Only when she begins to make steps toward recovery, facing the horrors of her past and reconciling them does she attain any piece of mind. Morrison divides her novel into three parts in order to track and distinguish the three stages of Sethe approach with dealing with her personal history. Through the character development of Sethe, Morrison suggests that in order to live in the present and enjoy the future, it is essential to reconcile the traumas of the past.

    Read More

More about Beloved: Critique with New Historicism

Open Document