The Body in "Beloved"

Auteur(s)

Kavak Melahat

Année de soutenance

2024

Directeur(s)

Rouby Bertrand

Diplôme

Master - 1ère année

Mention

Langues et Sociétés

Parcours-type

Identité et Transferts culturels – Anglais

Composante

Université de Limoges. Faculté des lettres et sciences humaines

Thème(s)

Histoire et critique littéraires, rhétorique

Mots-clés

Noirs américains -- Dans la littérature,

Noirs américains -- Esclaves

In her novel Beloved, Toni Morrison creates African American socio-cultural realities, particularly as they were during and right after slavery. Through her characters’ fragmented bodies, she denounces the atrocities, physical or psychological, of slavery that Black people experienced because of this institution. Additionally, she shows that the body and the narration work in concert to create individual identities, and that, consequently, both take part in the dehumanization and, later, the healing process of African Americans. Moreover, the body of the text, the fragmentation of which reflects Morrison’s narrative goals, is a literary manifestation of traditional African American sounds, be it oral, musical, or aural, and is used by the author to better convey her political agenda.