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Female images in Tony Morrison’s novel "The Song of Solomon"

Elena Dzhola 1

1러시아 블라디보스톡 극동대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

At the end of twentieth-century Afro-American writers brought enough original things into Afro-American literary tradition using the experience of their predecessors. The changes of Afro-American social position, new ways of American society development promoted the appearance untouched earlier subjects and problems in the literature. At present in USA the equal conditions are created for development of national cultures of the resident people there. Afro-American writers tried to show the world in their compositions different from Western, European. Authors want to show the duality in the light of mythological consciousness as they have the tradition of Afro-American folklore and African tradition as well. The typical hero of Afro-American literature at the end of twentieth century can't understand that the mythological thinking has the right to exist as historical. Namely this problem of two types of consciousnesses is in the novel of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon. The myth runs through the whole novel's plot. The stories have the mythological features about each former's generation up to African ancestor Solomon. This name is immortalized in the oral national creation: the songs are composed about him. But we see two poles in the novel: the rational approach to the world and the mythological. So, first of all the author opens in her book the secondary problems for African literature: maternity, relationship between mother and daughter, female friendship. One of the major subjects of Song of Solomon is cognition of "ego" by woman. The heroines seek their "egos", try to realize their ability, and to live full lives. They were deprived of these things over a period of whole history. According to Toni Morrison's notion, Afro-American woman is the base of "black" community, the keeper of its foundations and traditions. She is the continuer of family (kin), passes knowledge accumulated by the ancestry and succeeding generation.

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