About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherCambridge University Press

ISBN-100521885043

ISBN-139780521885041

eBay Product ID (ePID)63441061

Product Key Features

Number of Pages260 Pages

Publication NameToni Morrison and the Idea of Africa

LanguageEnglish

SubjectAmerican / African American, American / General

Publication Year2008

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaLiterary Criticism

AuthorLa Vinia Delois Jennings

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.7 in

Item Weight20.2 Oz

Item Length9 in

Item Width6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceScholarly & Professional

Reviews"...research on Africa and African heritage in Morrison's fiction is excellent...Recommended." - J. M. Wood, Choice, "...research on Africa and African heritage in Morrison's fiction is excellent...Recommended." <br/< - J. M. Wood, Choice, "Jennings is adept at portraying African elements in all their rich complexity and demonstrating their function in Morrison's novels without any sense of reductiveness." <br/<American Literary Scholarship, Jerome Klinkowitz, University of Northern Iowa, "Jennings is adept at portraying African elements in all their rich complexity and demonstrating their function in Morrison's novels without any sense of reductiveness." American Literary Scholarship, Jerome Klinkowitz, University of Northern Iowa

Dewey Edition22

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal813.54

Table Of Content1. Introduction: finding the elusive but identifiable blackness within the culture out of which Toni Morrison writes; 2. Kongo's Yowa and Dahomey's Vodun: the survival of West African traditional cosmologies in African America; 3. Bandoki: witches, ambivalent power, and the fusion of good and evil; 4. Kanda: living elders, the ancestral presence, and the ancestor as foundation; 5. Banganga: the specialists-medicine (wo)men and priest(esse)s; 6. Identifiable blackness: Toni Morrison's literary canon at the Western crossroads; Works cited; Index.

SynopsisToni Morrison's fiction has been read as a contribution to and critique of Western civilization and Christianity. La Vinia Jennings reveals the fundamental role African traditional religious symbols play in her work. Based on extensive research into West African religions and philosophy, Jennings uncovers and interprets the African themes, images and cultural resonances in Morrison's fiction. She shows how symbols brought to the Americas by West African slaves are used by Morrison in her landscapes, interior spaces, and the bodies of her characters. Jennings's analysis of these symbols shows how a West African collective worldview informs both Morrison's work, and contemporary African-American life and culture. This important contribution to Morrison studies will be of great interest to scholars of African-American literature., La Vinia Jennings uncovers and interprets the African themes, images and cultural resonances in Morrison's fiction. This important contribution to Morrison studies will be of great interest to scholars of African-American literature.

LC Classification NumberPS3563.O8749 Z7 2008