Description
What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Toni Morrison, one of American letters greatest voices, pondered these perplexing questions in her celebrated Ingersoll Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 2012 and published now for the first time in book form.
Perhaps because it is overshadowed by the more easily defined evil, goodness often escapes our attention. Recalling many literary examples, from Ahab to Coetzees Michael K, Morrison seeks the essence of goodness and ponders its significant place in her writing. She considers the concept in relation to unforgettable characters from her own works of fiction and arrives at conclusions that are both eloquent and edifying. In a lively interview conducted for this book, Morrison further elaborates on her lectures ideas, discussing goodness not only in literature but in society and historyparticularly black history, which has responded to centuries of brutality with profound creativity.
Morrisons essay is followed by a series of responses by scholars in the fields of religion, ethics, history, and literature to her thoughts on goodness and evil, mercy and love, racism and self-destruction, language and liberation, together with close examination of literary and theoretical expressions from her works. Each of these contributions, written by a scholar of religion, considers the legacy of slavery and how it continues to shape our memories, our complicities, our outcries, our lives, our communities, our literature, and our faith. In addition, the contributors engage the religious orientation in Morrisons novels so that readers who encounter her many memorable characters such as Sula, Beloved, or Frank Money will learn and appreciate how Morrisons notions of goodness and mercy also reflect her understanding of the sacred and the human spirit.
Author: Toni Morrison
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 10/01/2019
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.1lbs
Size: 11.60h x 5.51w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9780813943626
Language: English
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