Roynon, Tessa Kate. (2007) A new “Romen” Empire : Toni Morrison's love and the classics. Journal of American Studies, Vol.41 (No.1). pp. 31-47. ISSN 0021-8758

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Abstract

An important but little-studied feature of Toni Morrison's novels is their ambivalent relationship with classical tradition. Morrison was a classics minor while at Howard University, and her deployment of the cultural practices of ancient Greece and Rome is fundamental to her radical project. Indeed, the works' revisionary classicism extends far beyond the scope of established criticism, which has largely confined itself to the engagement with Greek tragedy in Beloved, with the Demeter/Kore myth in The Bluest Eye and with allusions to Oedipus and Odysseus in Song of Solomon.1 Morrison repeatedly subverts the central role that Greece and Rome have played in American self-definition and historiography. In Paradise, for example, the affinity between the Oven in Ruby and the Greek koine hestia or communal hearth critiques the historical Founding Fathers' insistence on their new nation's analogical relationship with the ancient republics. And in their densely allusive rewritings of slavery, the Civil War and its aftermath, Beloved and Jazz expose the dependence of the “Old South” on classical pastoral tradition. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in her most recent novel – Love (2003) – Morrison further develops the transformative engagement with America's Graeco-Roman inheritance that characterizes all of her previous fiction.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PS American literature
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Morrison, Toni. -- Beloved, Morrison, Toni. -- Bluest eye, Morrison, Toni. -- Song of Solomon, Literature, Comparative -- Classical and modern, American literature -- African American authors, American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of American Studies
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
ISSN:	0021-8758
Date:	April 2007
Volume:	Vol.41
Number:	No.1
Page Range:	pp. 31-47
Identification Number:	10.1017/S0021875806002738
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Funder:	Arts & Humanities Research Council (Great Britain) (AHRC)
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/649

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