{"title":"The Education of Milkman Dead: The Bildungsroman as Aesthetic Cycle in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon","authors":"D. Goodhead","doi":"10.1353/afa.2023.a903597","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Rational critique of one’s existential condition and questions of why, where, when, who, what dominate Morrison’s Song of Solomon. As she clearly shows in the novel, it is in finding answers to these questions that one is better able to deal with one’s existential condition and, where necessary, to make the transition from fragmentation to wholeness as a subject dealing with the history and experience of a racial formation that renders one either as an object or inferior other. In Song, the site of the exploration of these questions is the familial space and the marginal public constituted by black America, through which their unheard voices are given full play. Straddling the various familial spaces and marginal public is the novel’s protagonist, Milkman Dead, whose growth away from a selfish, materialistic young man Morrison tells magically as a bildungsroman, textual revision, and aesthetic cycle.","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2023.a903597","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LITERATURE, AMERICAN","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract:Rational critique of one’s existential condition and questions of why, where, when, who, what dominate Morrison’s Song of Solomon. As she clearly shows in the novel, it is in finding answers to these questions that one is better able to deal with one’s existential condition and, where necessary, to make the transition from fragmentation to wholeness as a subject dealing with the history and experience of a racial formation that renders one either as an object or inferior other. In Song, the site of the exploration of these questions is the familial space and the marginal public constituted by black America, through which their unheard voices are given full play. Straddling the various familial spaces and marginal public is the novel’s protagonist, Milkman Dead, whose growth away from a selfish, materialistic young man Morrison tells magically as a bildungsroman, textual revision, and aesthetic cycle.
期刊介绍:
As the official publication of the Division on Black American Literature and Culture of the Modern Language Association, the quarterly journal African American Review promotes a lively exchange among writers and scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences who hold diverse perspectives on African American literature and culture. Between 1967 and 1976, the journal appeared under the title Negro American Literature Forum and for the next fifteen years was titled Black American Literature Forum. In 1992, African American Review changed its name for a third time and expanded its mission to include the study of a broader array of cultural formations.