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With the continued expansion of the literary canon, multicultural works of modern literary fiction and autobiography have assumed an increasing importance for students and scholars of American literature. This exciting new series assembles key documents and criticism concerning these works that have so recently become central components of the American literature curriculum. Each casebook will reprint documents relating to the work's historical context and reception, present the best in critical essays, and when possible, feature an interview of the author. The series will provide, for the first time, an accessible forum in which readers can come to a fuller understanding of these contemporary masterpieces and the unique aspects of American ethnic, racial, or cultural experience that they so ably portray.

This casebook to Morrison's classic novel presents seven essays that represent the best in contemporary criticism of the book. In addition, the book includes a poem and an abolitionist's tract published after a slave named Margaret Garner killed her child to save her from slavery--the very incident Morrison fictionalizes in Beloved. ... Read more

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Morrison's best....a dramatic tale plagued by its past
Toni Morrsion's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Beloved, deals with the self-sacrifice of motherhood, the black experience in America, and an unescapable history which will haunt the bravest at heart.First, shecreates an elaborate, detailed story for the reader and secondly, she spinsthe literary web together by alterating between past and present.Morrisondoes an extraordinary job in portaying the trials and tribulations ofslavery shortly after the Civil War.Also, Toni's greatest aspect andtechnique of Beloved, is her use of the past ruling the present, thisenables the reader to know more about the character than the character mayknow about themself. The theme of the novel which I found mostintriguing was the aura of the book itself.The gothic tale conjured someof the most deep-rooted feelings from my soul.The book is definately amasterpiece of its time and history as well.And it feels extraordinary tohave a piece of history in the palms of your hands. ... Read more

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A traditional yet fresh approach to grasping the power of Morrison's writing

With essays by Yvonne Atkinson, Marc C. Conner, Susan Corey, Maria DiBattista, Barbara Johnson, Cheryl Lester, Katherine Stern, and Michael Wood

Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's novels have almost exclusively been examined as sagas illuminating history, race, culture, and gender politics. This gathering of eight essays by top scholars probes Morrison's novels and her growing body of nonfiction and critical work for the complex and potent aesthetic elements that have made her a major American novelist of the twentieth century.

Through traditional aesthetic concepts such as the sublime, the beautiful, and the grotesque, through issues of form, narrative, and language, and through questions of affect and reader response, the nine essays in this volume bring into relief the dynamic and often overlooked range within Morrison's writing. Employing aesthetic ideas that range from the ancient Greeks to contemporary research in the black English oral tradition, The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison shows the potency of these ideas for interpreting Morrison's writing. This is a force Morrison herself has often suggested in her claims that Greek tragedy bears a striking similarity to "Afro-American communal structures."

At the same time each essay attends to the ways in which Morrison also challenges traditional aesthetic concepts, establishing the African American and female voices that are essential to her sensibility. The result is a series of readings that simultaneously expands our understanding of Morrison's work and also provokes new thinking about an aesthetic tradition that is nearly 2,500 years old.

These essays offer a rich complement to the dominant approaches in Morrison scholarship by revealing aspects of her work that purely ideological approaches have obscured or about which they have remained oddly silent. Each essay focuses particularly on the relations between the aesthetic and the ethical in Morrison's writing and between the artistic production and its role in the world at large. These relations show the rich political implications that aesthetic analysis engenders.

By treating both Morrison's fiction and her nonfiction, the essays reveal a mind and imagination that have long been intimately engaged with the questions and traditions of the aesthetic domain. The result is a provocative and original contribution to Morrison scholarship, and to scholarship in American letters generally.

Marc C. Conner is an assistant professor of English at Washington and Lee University. He has published articles in Studies in American Fiction and Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction. ... Read more

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Understanding Toni Morrison
This collection of literary criticism is one of the best I've read. The new standard it presents as the basis for criticism is aesthetics.There is no jargon in these essays. I was especially pleased to read literary criticism written by women.Most importantly, these essays illuminated Morrison's writing and gave the authenticity of the book back to the author where I believe it belongs. ... Read more

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Joe Trace, door-to-door salesman, erstwhile devoted husband, shoots to death his lover of three months, 18 year old Dorcas. At the funeral, his determined, hardworking wife Violet tries to disfigure the corpse with a knife. Captures the complex humanity of black urban life. ... Read more

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4 cassettes, 5.5 hours, narrated by Lynne Thigpen, Griot Audio. ... Read more

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A Stunningly Picturesque slice of American life
An utterly stunningly picturesque slice of life in a cold and cold-blooded, capitalist, racist, male dominated society. Told at the periphery of our collective consciousness, as if were a daydream -- as a collection of vignettes about a family of women, a "stand-in" for any black family; indeed as a "stand-in" for any poor family (of women) in America.

It is a story so carefully and stealthily told -- at the speed of everyday life -- tucked away in the subtext beneath the techniques of a skilled writer -- that the very act itself is the definition of pure genius.

As American art goes, this is the work of an intellectual magician, a literary and societal --indeed a psychological sorcerer. It is work reserved only for the elite of even the elite of literary geniuses; and told only as a genius could tell it: without lashing out and without the palpable and expected rancor; without even a semblance of conscious intent: There is no need for a hidden agenda, as the pure truth (even when it is imagined) can tell no lies.

(Now I understand why we need fiction. The truth hides between the lines, in the crevices of everyday life. Occasionally we need to coax it out into the light of day.)

There is no need to scream in the face of American society -- even when it is a powerful scream that is needed. There is no need for "calling American society down" for what it is and for what it has done to our collective humanity; the everyday details of Frieda, Claudia and Pecola's lives speak so eloquently for themselves (and for us all). There is no need to single out the complexities of politics, for life on the ground "vectors" directly into the politics above.

The writer of fiction gives us the litarary evidence at the level of everyday consciousness of the interconnectedness of the brutality and inhumanity of our cultural system as that brutality and inhumanity is written in the background of the script of society's drama, and as it gets played out daily in the lives of everyday people. What a work of art! Ten stars

Beauty in the Irredeemable, the Fulfillment of the Impossible Through a False Sacrament of the Eucharist
As solemn as it is touching, The Bluest Eye distinguishes itself from other literary works for its extraordinary prose, structure, and exploration of an exceptionally weighty subject matter through an introspective look into the lives of African Americans in a time of exceptional turmoil and crossfire in mainstream culture. The novel delves into the ethics of humanity and the corrupt façades manifested by unrealistic desires and distorted ambition, ultimately revealing the destructive and unpredictable nature of human beings. Take Pecola, a child born into an abusive family, who desperately, horrifically, wants to have the blue eyes which would make her beautiful and acceptable to herself. The work targets her fears, dreams, and desires through others. As Pecola is a weak-minded and inexpressive main character, information about her is received intravenously through those around her: a drunk of a father, a mother blinded by abstract notions of good and false ideals of beauty, and three whores who feed her stories and lies. The main notion of the novel, Toni Morrison had argued upon its publication, is to create such a medium through which individuals, characters, could stand for themselves. Morrison ardently enforces this abject realism through selective characterization and through her exploration of the ambiguous in the sense of moral reprehensibility. The novel lacks the squeaky clean figures of prior fiction dealing with similar subject matter. Some individuals in The Bluest Eye are shamelessly without dignity while others, rather than being cleansed by conventional and stereotypical principles of ideal moral behavior, are corrupted and tainted by them.

Stark contrasts between values, and attitudes, and ethics distinguish each character introduced in the novel. Yet interestingly, there is an omniscient intermingling of what is considered ethical versus what is considered immoral.We are constantly reminded of the randomness of existence, the inescapability of both acts of good and evil in life, and the corruptibility of the most pious of people. Love, like so many emotions, is explored in the many heart wrenching scenes which comprise of this book. Indeed, as Morrison wrote in The Bluest Eye, "Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly" (p. 206). However strange, different, poor, or stupid we are, we are all capable of love, of causing pleasure and pain. Yes, Pecola does receive the gift she so desperately yearns for, yet the cost of this treasured boon is her and her family's destitution. We are finally given her perspective as she careens into penury and insolvency. She can only find peace by withdrawing deep into herself. In this state, she loses her sanity, everything with which she can possibly utilize to comprehend and interact with a reality she so desperately wanted to reject. The Bluest Eye shows us the destructiveness of human passion and desire. That which makes us ambitious, reverent, and triumphant can also corrupt and devastate us. An excellent read whose implications linger long after the last page; The Bluest Eye is indeed an incredibly indisputable work of excellent literary fiction.

Satisfied
Product arrived as described. I requested expedited shipping but found that this item arrived only one day ahead of another book that I ordered on the same day with normal shipping. My son needed this ASAP to write a college paper. Overall- very statisfied.

By jennifer alvarez
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison has been a different kind of experience. It explains detail by detail what happens in a daily life or just by experience.I haven't read none of Toni Morrisons book before but i am happy my teacher recommended this one. I don't exactly have this book because i have the hard cover one, but i know and checked that this one and the hard cover one are exactly a like. But yeah, I ll explain what happens in the book to you, but I am more likely convince, it would be a better experience to read it and find out. Good luck and i hope helped.

Time honored classis
This is a classic written in Morrison's wonderful style which brings the reader into the heart of the characters. This particular edition is the paperback version that you will see most teenagers carrying around. ... Read more

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This edition of Bloom's Major Novelists examines the work of the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, Toni Morrison. Included is an analysis of what some critics view as her strongest novel, Song of Solomon. Other works studied in this text include The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, and Beloved.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School; preeminent literary critic of our time. Titles include detailed plot summaries of the novel, extracts from scholarly critical essays on the novels, a complete bibliography of the writer's novels, and more. ... Read more

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This is part of a new series of guides to contemporarynovels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible andinformative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimedand most influential novels of recent years – from ‘The Remainsof the Day’ to ‘White Teeth’. A team of contemporary fictionscholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to providea thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. ... Read more

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Mobley's carefully argued study simultaneously offers important new insights into the works of these two significant women writers and points out ways in which narrative may be used as a catalyst for cultural and social change. "A richly suggestive study."--American Literature. ... Read more

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This collection of contemporary criticism explores her concern with racial and gender issues and analyzes her in relation to oher major modern authors, her philosophical and religious speculations, and her preoccupation with the process of fiction-making.

These classics provide a broad lok at critical argument about Toni Morrison's meanings and siggnificance during the past 10 years.From the formative effects of learning one's "Otherness' as a result of majority perception, to the apocalyptic implications of racial memory, to the moral psychologically constructive act of storytelling, to the structural function served by improvisational jazz music, to the imagery associated with both flight and naming, to the uniquely female experience of community--major issues raised by Morrison's body of work are explicated here. ... Read more

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Awesome
I ordered my book last wednesday it was shipped on thursday i received it today, you ppl are awesome....I wish you could carry all my books....take care and continue this great customer service. ... Read more