The Gnosis of Toni Morrison
Morrison’s Conversation with Herman Melville, with a Nod to Umberto Eco
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12920323 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Justine Tally (Universidad de La Laguna, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 357-376 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Contemporary Women s Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1754-1476 • E-ISSN: 1754-1484 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/cww/vpaa011 |
| OpenAlex | W3047949769 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
Long before Toni Morrison was extensively recognized as a serious contender in the “Global Market of Intellectuals,” she was obviously reading and absorbing challenging critical work that was considered “provocative and controversial” by the keepers of the US academic community at the time. While no one disputes the influence of Elaine Pagels’ work on Gnosticism at the University of Princeton, particularly its importance for Jazz and Paradise, the second and third novels of the Morrison trilogy, Gnosticism in Beloved has not been so carefully considered. Yet this keen interest in Gnosticism coupled with the author’s systematic study of authors from the mid-19th-century American Renaissance inevitably led her to deal with the fascination of Renaissance authors with Egypt (where the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were rediscovered), its ancient civilization, and its mythology. The extensive analysis of a leading French literary critic of Herman Melville, Prof. Viola Sachs, becomes the inspiration for a startlingly different reading of Morrison’s seminal novel, one that positions this author in a direct dialogue with the premises of Melville’s masterpiece, Moby-Dick, also drawing on the importance of Gnosticism for Umberto Eco’s 1980 international best-seller, The Name of the Rose
Art · Art history · Conversation · Gnosticism · Intertextuality · Literature · Mythology · Reading (process · The Renaissance · Trilogy · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Philosophy
The Concept of the Coincidentia Oppositorum in the Thought of Mircea Eliade
Toni Morrison and Motherhood
Love as reclamation in Toni Morrison's African American rhetoric
La contre-bible de Melville
The Ghosts of Slavery
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
The Gnosis of Hawthorne and Melville
Oral Tradition as History
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |