Abstract

The well-known African-American woman writer Toni Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her novel Beloved, which is regarded as a milestone in American literature. Infanticide is the most tragic, the most horrific, and the most thought-provoking theme in the novel. Morrison, as a black woman writer, inherits and reconstructs the infanticide matrix in the novel with her rich imagination and poetical expression, taking full advantage of the post-modernism and the Latin American magic realism. Through the analysis of infanticide matrix, this paper aims to make an interpretation to Toni Morrison’s artistic approach and her inheritance and reconstruction of infanticide matrix, exploring the evil of slavery and the deep, strong mother love in Beloved.

Keywords: infanticide matrix; inheritance; reconstruction; Toni Morrison

Contents

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction-1

2. Literature Review-2

3. An introduction to Infanticide Matrix-3

4. The Inheritance of the Traditional Infanticide in Beloved-4

4.1 The traditional infanticide-4

4.2 Toni Morrison’s inheritance of the tradition-5

5. The Reconstruction of Infanticide Matrix in Beloved-6

5.1 The construction of the infanticide matrix-6

5.2 The deconstruction of the infanticide matrix-9

5.3 The reconstruction of the infanticide matrix-10

6. Conclusion-11

Works Cited-13