This article aims to present Beloved, a ghost-in-the-flesh protagonist of Toni Morrison＇s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved （1987）, as an incarnation of memory of slavery. Interpreted as personal and shared expe...This article aims to present Beloved, a ghost-in-the-flesh protagonist of Toni Morrison＇s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved （1987）, as an incarnation of memory of slavery. Interpreted as personal and shared experience, Beloved will be analyzed on the basis of memory＇s dynamic nature as an active mnemonic agent operating in and between the individual and collective zones. It will be also argued that on the one hand, Beloved embodies memories of past slaved lives of the novel＇s central characters, Sethe and Paul D, while on the other hand she plays the role of an allegoric reminder of all Black slaves who lived and died in bondage on the American continent. Finally, Beloved will be symbolically seen as a historical, cultural and psychological link between contemporary African Americans and their African ancestors of the Middle Passage. The theoretical framework for this study of Morrison＇s most memorable ghost figure will follow from a discussion of memory＇s individual and shared qualities, as well as from the concepts of a collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, and collective memory.展开更多
文摘This article aims to present Beloved, a ghost-in-the-flesh protagonist of Toni Morrison＇s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Beloved （1987）, as an incarnation of memory of slavery. Interpreted as personal and shared experience, Beloved will be analyzed on the basis of memory＇s dynamic nature as an active mnemonic agent operating in and between the individual and collective zones. It will be also argued that on the one hand, Beloved embodies memories of past slaved lives of the novel＇s central characters, Sethe and Paul D, while on the other hand she plays the role of an allegoric reminder of all Black slaves who lived and died in bondage on the American continent. Finally, Beloved will be symbolically seen as a historical, cultural and psychological link between contemporary African Americans and their African ancestors of the Middle Passage. The theoretical framework for this study of Morrison＇s most memorable ghost figure will follow from a discussion of memory＇s individual and shared qualities, as well as from the concepts of a collective consciousness, the collective unconscious, and collective memory.
