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Feminist Criticism In Morrison's Bluest Eye, By Toni Morrison

Decent Essays

Morrison’s use of the traditional African American materials have always attracted the attention of the scholars. Since the beginning of Morrison’s literary career, critics have been emphasising on her representation of the black culture from three different perspectives—Euro-American, African and African American. Keeping in the mind the huge quantity and wide variety of such critical works a selective literature review in chronological sequence is felt to be of some help in tracing out the objectives of this research project: After Morrison has published her first two novels Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973), she started receiving attention from the critics and reviewers but these early reviews were mere favourable comments rather than scholarly interpretations. Some of the earliest reviewers and scholars were—Haskel Frankel, Jerry Bryant, Joan Biscoff, Sarah Blackburn, Jacqueline De Weever etc. It is quite obvious that in such early scholarly works and reviews of Morrison’s novels a Euro American subject position is taken for granted …show more content…

Barbara Christian’s substantial chapter “The Contemporary Fables of Toni Morrison” in her highly acclaimed book Black Feminist Criticism (1985) , is the initial attempt to observe Morrison’s work from a feminist view point. The critic describes Morrison’s first two novels as “ fantastic earthly realism” , “rooted in history and mythology”, and observes that their themes develop “much the same way as a good musician finds the hidden melodies within a musical phrase’’(Christian,59). She illuminates the extent to which the community acts as “hindrances” in both novels and also emphasizes the aural qualities of Morrison’s writing, the use of “language as tonality and as dance” to what she calls “our society’s sound” (Christian

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