I Know I Can’t Change the Future, But I Can Change the Past”
Toni Morrison, Robin Coste Lewis, and the Classical Tradition
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12920542 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Grace McGowan (0000-0002-3147-0393, Boston University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 339-356 |
| Publication date | 2019-11-01 |
| 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/vpaa001 |
| OpenAlex | W3048151406 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
“A central figure in transnational intellectual history” (Roynon, 2013), Toni Morrison’s oeuvre has helped deconstruct the triangulated relationship between a European Graeco-Roman classical tradition, Africa, and America. Morrison’s deconstruction of the classical past and its aesthetics have laid the foundation for the reconstructive work of a new generation of writers, including Robin Coste Lewis. Both writers renegotiate and reclaim a classical aesthetic by recovering its African roots and situating it in an African American context. In addition, the article (1) examines the role of a classical aesthetic in beauty discourse and Robin Coste Lewis’s re-vision of the black female body and (2) addresses what this means for canonicity, linking Lewis’s ambivalence about reclaiming a classical aesthetic to Morrison’s ambivalence in “Unspeakable Things Unspoken” (1987)
Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Beauty · Context (archaeology · Deconstruction (building · Psychoanalysis · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · History
| Highly cited | No |
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