（英语语言文学专业论文）试分析《爵士乐》写作策略.pdf

重庆大学硕士学位论文 中文摘要 i 摘 要 托尼莫里森作为唯一一位获得诺贝尔文学奖的黑人女性作家，始终从美国黑 人的历史和现实生活中选取创作题材，注重写作技巧，运用富含独特文化内涵的 叙事手段和写作策略来传达她对黑人及其种族的深切关怀。以一个有关爱与谋杀 的故事为背景和线索贯穿的小说爵士乐正是这样一部作品。 小说以独特的爵士乐风格，百衲被的叙事策略和身份模糊的流动性叙事者吸 引并激发读者的思考。这些表面上互不相关联的叙事特征实际上相互联系，层层 依托，通过回顾黑人历史中这一段重要时期，表达了莫里森对生活在这一时期的 黑人的存在这一主题的深切关怀和深刻反思。 文章主要分析了爵士乐中三个方面的写作策略：以爵士乐为特征的叙事 手段，百衲被的叙事策略和叙事者的流动性。 首先，爵士乐发源自黑人音乐，借助它描绘黑人的城市生活，构建了小说的 爵士乐风格。应答、重复和即兴、停顿是爵士乐中常用的手法，共同合成爵士乐 独有的节奏美和即兴创作之美，诱发听者的情感起伏。小说借用了这些音乐上的 手法来展现爵士乐时期的黑人历史，使小说获得了音乐的美感，渲染和突显了内 在于城市这个符号中的政治、种族和性别等黑人生存的危机。 其次，百衲被是黑人女性在赤贫生活中的发明创造，记录着黑人的历史和文 化传统，尤其是黑人女性创造的美学价值。始终坚持站在黑人女性角度创作的莫 里森运用百衲被这一象征意味浓郁的标志来作为叙事手段传达了她认为黑人女性 只有回归传统文化并构建相互支持的体系才能在种族和性别的双重压制下获得完 整的人格和主体性的观点，这也是她对黑人女性主义的贡献。 最后，文章用叙事学的观点分析了爵士乐中流动性的叙事者。小说中的 叙事者是全知全能的和有限知识的，是客观和主观的，是可靠和不可靠的综合体。 小说叙事者在有限知识的主观的声音和全知全能的客观的声音间，在零聚焦和内 聚焦间自由转换。 关键词：写作策略，爵士乐，百衲被，叙事者的流动性 重庆大学硕士学位论文 abstract ii abstract toni morrison, the only african-american female nobel prize winner, attaches much importance to technical experiment and never forgets in her works to employ those recognized and culturally endowed writing strategies and narratological means to resolve her dilemma of being a double marginalized black female writer. these writing strategies come to a full reflection in her novel, jazz. first, morrison incorporates characteristics of jazz music into her composition of this novel, including call-and-response patterns, improvisations and pause effect. in this way, morrison intends to imitate the whole text as a piece of jazz performance. this narrative strategy endows the novel with a special quality and enchanting beauty of musical rhythm and requires an awareness on the readers part to participate in the process of creation of the novel. in this schema, morrison restores the black oral and cultural tradition as a means to repudiate the dominating white cultural hegemony. on the other hand, morrison presents a new perspective of conceiving of the history of the african-americans in the jazz age. second, morrison contributes to the womanist theory based on quilting by utilizing quilting as a narrative technique to represent black female experiences neglected by the white and black men. morrison intends from the failure of black females integrating into the urban city to show that only by restoring the value of supportive female network or community while reserving their diversity, can these black females have an integrated personality in the industrialized environment. in this way, morrison offers an alternative for womanist theory to counteract the prevailing theoretical hegemony imposed by white feminism. last, the fluid state of the narrator contributes to another distinct writing strategy employed consciously by morrison. the narrator of jazz is an unbelievable blend of both omniscient and limited, both reliable and unreliable, both objective and subjective. the narrative voice is part character and part omniscient narrator. this fluid personality of the narrator in jazz is an overturn of violent hierarchies and binaries proposed by conventions by blending two seemingly contrast qualities. keywords: writing strategies, jazz, patchwork quilting, fluidity of narrator 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 1 chapter one introduction born in 1931, lorain, ohio, the united states, toni morrison is the second of four children in a black working-class family. displaying an early interest in literature, morrison studied humanities at howard and cornell universities, and then became a teacher in howard university and since 1989, a professor in the humanities at princeton university. she has also worked as an editor for random house and given numerous public lectures, specializing in african-american literature. she made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wide audience for “her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of black america” (peach, 2000:78). being a member of the american academy of arts and letters since 1981, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the pulitzer prize in 1988 and the nobel prize for literature in 1993. as the only african-american female writer ever to receive the nobel prize, toni morrison is heralded by the swedish academy as a literary artist of the first rank which lauds her for the “visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of american reality” (press release of nobel prize for literature in 1993). she delves into the language itself, a language she wants to liberate from the fetters of race and gender. “my work requires me to think about how free i can be as an african-american woman writer in my genderized, sexualized, wholly racialized world” (morrison, 1992:3). these are words morrison presented in her book of essays, playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. and she (ibid:3) adds, my project rises from delight, not disappointment.” in addition to her novels, she also conducts a revisionist reading of american literature by means of american africanism which affirms the importance of african presence in the literature field, and she releases a number of critical essays, public speeches, interviews and conversations, all of which attribute to her enormous popularity and prestige even unattainable to many white male writers who are conventionally considered to be of dominant presence in literature world. according to lanser (1992:121), morrison has “forged what is by any standard a brilliant career as a novelist whose verbal authority seems widely to compel belief”. since the publication of her first novel the bluest eye(1970), morrison has made 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 2 her debut in literature stage and thereafter has published seven novels, namely, sula(1974), song of solomn(1977), tar baby(1981), beloved(1987), jazz(1992), paradise(1998), and love(2003). out of the three volumes of toni morrisons trilogy, staring with the beloved and ending with the paradise, jazz continues her exploration of african americans past trauma, present pain and future uncertainty and her experiments of narrative techniques with her consciousness of being a double marginalized female black writer. published in 1992, jazz is the second novel of the trilogy (beloved, jazz, paradise) that describes the history of african americans from slavery onward, a legacy of dispossession which has had a dramatic effect on subsequent generations. based on a true-to-life story in a photograph by james van der zee in the harlem book of the dead(1978), a girl who was shot by her sweetheart at a party with a noiseless gun, concealed the truth of her injury to give her lover a chance to run away, and then bled to death, jazz discloses the essence of the story in the first ten lines: joe trace-in his fifties, door-to-door salesman of beauty products, shoots his three-month lover, eighteen-year-old dorcas. at the funeral, his wife, violet, herself a hairdresser, tries to disfigure the corpse with a knife. however, it is more than a horrific triad love story, through which morrison endows the personal history with social, political, racial and gender significances. set in the 1920s, the years following the great migration of black americans journeying from the rural south to the industrial north and after the world war i, an era known as the jazz age infused with overwhelming optimism and enjoyment, america has witnessed a prosperity of industry and invention, “a miracle of progress in which every barrier to human comfort and achievement could be broken” (norton, 1992: 853). a freedom of action and belief seemed to go hand in hand with the triumph of industrial technology. ideas of australian psychologist siegmud freud on sex became an open talk. new manners and morals were shaping. tv and motion pictures, radio and phonograph were changing peoples lives. it was a time of enjoyment in which many people listened and danced to jazz music. behind the prosperity, changing manners and moral and overindulgent enjoyment, people felt they were losing faith and felt disillusioned and lost. scott fitzergeralds novel, the great gatzby, is a miniature of that time and white americans in that time. however, what was the situation to the black americans who were lured to the cities by the promises of economic opportunities and liberty? it was much more complicated than the debilitating effects of white oppression. they were 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter one introduction 3 freed, but segregated. they were employed but lowest paid. singing and dancing to jazz, they did not remain the same people as they were and as they had expected. jazz deals with the change of african americans from the darkness of slavery and its nightmarish aftermath to the glitter, exaltation and the pain of the turn-of-the century migration of blacks. through jazz, morrison revisions the era from the angle of black americans females when social and cultural fabrics has undergone a drastic transformation, for it is for blacks, who were lured by the promising well-being in the city, “a history of aspiration, disillusion, discovery and loss” (duvell, 2000: 26). as a black female writer from distinctive ethnic and cultural background, toni morrison is well aware of the dilemma she has to confront. in order to survive in the “genderized, sexualized , wholly racialized” literary field (morrison, 1992:3), morrison chooses to adopt the special use of language with well-intended writing strategies. it is morrisons way “in which a nonwhite, africanlike or africanist presence or persona is constructed in the united states” (ibid:11). the present thesis is intended to have a comprehensive and integrated study on the writing strategies involved in jazz, the narrative effects created by these writing strategies and the influences involved in choosing these writing strategies. structurally, the thesis is composed of four body chapters in addition to chapter one, the general introduction and chapter six, the conclusion: chapter two is literature review, which makes a summary of articles and books relevant to the composition of the present thesis. in chapter three, the author elaborates the jazz style reflected in jazz, narrative effects created by this jazz style of writing and influences of jazz style technique on the black literature. in chapter four, the author analyzes patchwork quilting utilized in jazz, its narrative effects, and influences of patchwork quilting technique on womanist theory. chapter five centers on the fluid state of the narrator, its narrative effects and traces of deconstruction in the fluidity of narrator technique. 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 4 chapter two literature review 2.1 a review of the black literature in the 20th century the black literature has come to three times of prosperity in the 20th century: the harlem renaissance in the 1920s, the one in the 1940s-1950s, and lastly in the 1970s. harlem renaissance, an african american cultural movement of the 1920s and early 1930s that was centered in the harlem neighborhood of new york city. the harlem renaissance marked the first time that mainstream publishers and critics took african american literature seriously and that african american literature and arts attracted significant attention from the nation at large. although it was primarily a literary movement, it was closely related to developments in african american music, theater, art, and politics. the harlem renaissance changed forever the dynamics of african american arts and literature in the united states. the writers that followed in the 1930s and 1940s found that publishers and the public were more open to african american literature than they had been at the beginning of the century. furthermore, the body of literature created in the renaissance inspired writers such as ralph ellison and richard wright to pursue literary careers in the late 1930s and the 1940s. the outpouring of african american literature of the 1980s and 1990s by such writers as alice walker and toni morrison also had its roots in the writing of the harlem renaissance. during the 1930s and 40s, hughes and sterling a. brown kept the folk spirit alive in african american poetry. by the early 1940s, three figures, melvin b. tolson, robert hayden, and chicagoan gwendolyn brooks, were showing how the vernacular tradition could be adapted to modernist experimentation. the 1940s was also a decade of creative experimentation in autobiography, led by du boiss dusk of dawn (1940), and hurstons dust tracks on a road (1942). in the 1970s, the black literature has come to its third climax. compared with the first two ones in the 1920s and the 1940s, the most remarkable distinction was that it was led by black women writers. these black women writers works have largely expanded the scope of american black literature as well as the american literature and the world literature in terms of their thematic concerns and their experimental writing techniques. the most distinguished among them were maya angelous i know why the caged bird sings (1970), alice walkers the color purple (1982) and toni morrisons 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 5 beloved (1987). according to professor wang shouren (2004: 23), toni morrison is among the list of the most accomplished black writers and her works have promoted the black literature to a brand-new stage. deeply rooted in the unique afro-american history, folklores and real lives, morrisons works have profound thematic concerns and utilize characteristic narrative techniques. 2.2 womanist theory in chapter one of toni morrison and womanist discourse, mori (1999:1) theorizes the term, “womanist”. mori says that “womanist” is “a black feminist or feminist of color”, coming “from the black folk expression of mothers to female children, you acting womanish. i.e., like a woman. usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior”. mori (1999: 2)states that, “womanist,” the term which alice walker defined, manifests a tremendous potentiality for forging a new inclusive female autonomy, regardless of race, sex, or sexual preference, transcending the overwhelming argument between white feminists and woman-of-color thinkers and activists, the latter criticizing the former for dominating female discourse. moris definition of “womanist”, supplanting “feminist,” indicates that a womanist celebrates a racial concern of women of color and a diversity of personal experiences and will saliently evade the authoritative domination associated with elite white feminists, about whom most women of color have expressed their distrust and dissatisfaction. the white feminist movement, which was originated by gifted intellectuals in academia, has become alien to other ethnic groups of women, the majority of whom belong to the working class. although women of color also deny a patriarchal dominance as white feminists do, according to mori, the major critique by black women activists and critics to white feminists is the lack of subjectivity attributed to african-american women in white feminist discourse, since most of the literary models in white feminist discourse and cases debated in women-centered scholarship have been of middle-class or upper-class euro-american origin. white feminists finally alienate racial issues from their concerns and arguments, failing to investigate the political and social causes of oppressions inflicted on black women. therefore, women of color perceive the white female movement as another form of racialized repression, thus causing them to refuse to admit their advocacy for feminism. 重庆大学硕士学位论文 chapter two literature review 6 whereas the financial independence from patriarchal dominance achieved by obtaining a job is considered by white feminists as a crucial step towards social and political independence, work to black women means both racial and gender oppression. just like morrison says, “we anticipated it work, so we did not have the luxury that i see certain middle class women have, of whether to work or to have at house” (talor-guthrie, 1994:132). the argues between these two groups of women are attributed to the fact that the white middle-class women enjoy a much greater social and political advantages while the black women live in the lowest status with lowest-paid jobs in the white society. and on the other hand, black women have a much different cultural experience and historical background. therefore, the black womanists seek not only liberation from male dominance and racial oppression but also the recovery of their culture and their ethnic identities. mori (1999:16) upholds that womanists “need to reject the narrow implications of a feminism which reflects the interests of only a certain influential group of women and link the academy to the reality of working-class women of color” and that more importantly, womanist theory “should be redefined so as to reflect the inner voices of the oppressed and to help them to obtain freedom from social, racial and gender disadvantages-in the process deconstructing those intellectual concepts which might be repressive”. to reconstruct an inclusive womanist theory which is valuable both on academic grounds and on practical reality bases and which represents the cultural experiences and inner voices of women of color, collins (2000), in her famous black feminist thought, proposes to create a theory based on the african-american notion of diversity which offers an alternative to the western notion of theory based on binary opposition. she suggests that african-american women construct an