Toni Morrison's Beloved and the apotropaic imagination

Resource Information

The work Toni Morrison's Beloved and the apotropaic imagination represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri-St. Louis Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Toni Morrison's Beloved and the apotropaic imagination

Statement of responsibility

Kathleen Marks

Creator

• Marks, Kathleen, 1963-

Subject

• African American women in literature
• African American women in literature
• Beloved
• Beloved (Morrison, Toni)
• Electronic book
• Infanticide in literature
• Infanticide in literature
• LITERARY CRITICISM -- American | General
• Literature
• Morrison, Toni
• Self-preservation in literature
• Slavery in literature
• Slavery in literature
• Morrison, Toni
• Ohio
• Ohio -- In literature
• Self-destructive behavior in literature
• Self-destructive behavior in literature
• Self-preservation in literature

Genre

• Electronic book

Language

eng

Summary

"Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Apotropaic Imagination investigates Toni Morrison's Beloved in light of ancient Greek influences, arguing that the African American experience depicted in the novel can be set in a broader context than is usually allowed. Kathleen Marks gives a history of the apotropaic from ancient to modern times, and shows the ways that Beloved'sprotagonist, Sethe, and her community engage the apotropaic as a mode of dealing with their communal suffering. Apotropaic, from the Greek, meaning "to turn away from," refers to rituals that were performed in ancient times to ward off evil deities. Modern scholars use the term to denote an action that, in attempting to prevent an evil, causes that very evil. Freud employed the apotropaic to explain his thought concerning Medusa and the castration complex, and Derrida found the apotropaic's logic of self-sabotage consonant with his own thought. Marks draws on this critical history and argues that Morrison's heroine's effort to keep the past at bay is apotropaic: a series of gestures aimed at resisting a danger, a threat, an imperative. These gestures anticipate, mirror, and put into effect that which they seek to avoid--one does what one finds horrible so as to mitigate its horror. In Beloved, Sethe's killing of her baby reveals this dynamic: she kills the baby in order to save it. As do all great heroes, Sethe transgresses boundaries, and such transgressions bring with them terrific dangers: for example, the figure Beloved. Yet Sethe's action has ritualistic undertones that link it to the type of primal crimes that can bring relief to a petrified community. It is through these apotropaic gestures that the heroine and the community resist what Morrison calls "cultural amnesia" and engage in a shared past, finally inaugurating a new order of love. Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Apotropaic Imagination is eclectic in its approach--calling upon Greek religion, Greek mythology and underworld images, and psychology. Marks looks at the losses and benefits of the kind of self-damage/self-agency the apotropaic affords. Such an approach helps to frame the questions of the role of suffering in human life, the relation between humans and the underworld, and the uses of memory and history."--Publishers website

Member of

• EBSCO eBook Public Library Collection-North America
• Ebook Central Academic Complete

Action

digitized

Cataloging source

N$T

Dewey number

813/.54

Government publication

government publication of a state province territory dependency etc

Index

index present

Language note

English

LC call number

PS3563.O8749

LC item number

B435 2002eb

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography