Honors Theses
Date of Award
2009
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Ethel Young-Scurlock
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to draw a literary connection between two distinct fields of study, magical realism and trauma studies, through the use of two specific works of fiction, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jose Saramago's Blindness. In order to understand how the two fields of literary thought are connected. the thesis first attempts to distill the terms. With no definitive texts, magical realism and trauma studies are complex and seemingly indefinable ideas. However, through the process of definition, the thesis illustrates how the two are connected through the desire for both trauma, a "fleeting" concept, and magic, an unreal and supernatural idea, to be represented artistically. As illustrations of how the concepts relate, Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jose Saramago's Blindness represent very real traumas, the trauma of slavery and the trauma of divine faith, respectively, through an artistic magic. Morrison's Beloved uses a ghost to help African Americans look at the specter of slavery and heal slavery's traumatic scars. Saramago's Blindness explores the trauma of divine faith. a trauma resulting from the horrors done in God's name, through the use of an epic. magical" plague of white blindness unleashed upon humanity.
Recommended Citation
Solomon, Eric Edward, "Shattering Colored Glass: The Trauma of Magical Realism n Toni Morrison's Beloved and José Saramago's Blindness" (2009). Honors Theses. 2427.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/2427
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