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The Postmodern Metanarratives and Chronotope: Reading Space and Time in Toni Morrison's A Mercy

Article

Last updated: 04 Jan 2025

Subjects

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Tags

• الدراسات اللغوية والنقدية في اللغة العربية والانجليزية والفرنسية والألمانية والإيطالية

Abstract

This paper tends to explore the counter discourse of a prominent Africa-American novelist; Toni Morrison. Time is materialized in space, and as a consequence, distinctive chronotopes appear pleading for an authoritative image and identity. The chronotopic discourse in Morrison's A Mercy belongs to a period which is accounted as a cornerstone in the history of the American nation. A Mercy goes back to the start of the epoch of slavery in the seventeenth century America. Though the space in Morrison's A Mercy is plantations, it seems to accentuate the theme of slavery through depicting various forms of it.
The paper investigates a very distinguished novel, A Mercy, which is accounted as revolutionary in the vein of the writings of Toni Morrison. The human basis of the writings of Morrison creates an inter/trans counter discourse. It revives the history of her nation in search for eliminating corruption through introducing a metanarrative for local and small narratives so as to legitimize the various versions of "the truth" in two crucial transitional periods in the African-American history according to which the features of the modern history of the nations are formed. The novel defies the prevalent metanarratives on slavery and corruption in a postcolonial realm. It also legitimizes a modern pluralistic view of the history of its nations by disseminating a new type of knowledge invoking metanarratives of freedom whose hero is humanity. In the postcolonial counter discourse of Morrison, Bakhtin's approach of chronotope and Lyotard's concept of metanarratives are intertwined.

DOI

10.21608/fjhj.2020.45280.1058

Keywords

Keywords: Metanarratives, chronotope, A Mercy

Authors

First Name

لاميس محمد محمد عبد الحميد

Last Name

الجافي

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

کلية الألسن جامعة المنيا

Email

lameesgafi@gmail.com

City

المنیا

Orcid

-

Volume

92

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

20271

Issue Date

2021-01-01

Receive Date

2020-10-05

Publish Date

2021-01-06

Page Start

269

Page End

293

Print ISSN

1687-2630

Online ISSN

1110-4341

Link

https://fjhj.journals.ekb.eg/article_132531.html

Detail API

https://fjhj.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=132531

Order

4

Type

مقالات بحثیة

Type Code

1,259

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

مجلة الآداب والعلوم الإنسانية

Publication Link

https://fjhj.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

The Postmodern Metanarratives and Chronotope: Reading Space and Time in Toni Morrison's A Mercy

Details

Type

Article

Created At

22 Jan 2023