Jazz And African-American Literature—The Application Of The Feature Of Jazz Music: Taking Toni Morrison’s Jazz As An Example_英语论文

摘要

托尼·莫里森的小说《爵士乐》讲述了一对黑人夫妻与一个黑人女孩之间的三角恋情故事。它映射出非籍美国人上个世纪二十年代的城市生活。在那个种族关系正值巨变的时期里，非籍美国人被迫离开他们生活的乡村，前往大城市寻求生存机遇。然而，依然存在的种族歧视和在城市中求生的艰难使他们背负了巨大的压力，城市的繁华新奇与冷漠让他们迷失了生活的方向。在爵士时代的影响下，托尼·莫里森借鉴爵士乐的特点，采用其的即兴性，忧郁性和节奏的复杂性，创作了小说《爵士乐》。这种独特的写作方式使得小说故事情节更加生动，人物塑造更加立体，从而引起读者对上世纪初美国黑人群体城市生活状态的反思。

关键词：《爵士乐》 音乐 托尼莫里森  

Abstract

Toni Morrison's work Jazz describes a tragic love story among a black couple and a black girl. It reflects the city life of African-Americans in 1920s. At the historic change point of time, African-Americans were forced to leave their hometown, move into big cities for better opportunities. As the discrimination narrowed their living space and the hardship of surviving in big cities give them huge pressure. Under the influence of Jazz Age, Toni Morrison uses jazz music as reference, adopts its features. By analyzing the improvisatory, melancholy and complexity shown in the novel Jazz, the influence by jazz music is proved. Due to this influence and the unique way of organizing the whole novel, a vivid story and stereoscopic characters are shown by Toni Morrison, and it makes readers introspect the inner causes of the tragedies.

Key words: Jazz; Music; Toni Morrison

Contents

1. Introduction. 1

2. The Improvisatory In Jazz.5

2.1 The Improvisatory On Structure.5

2.2 The Improvisatory On Content.6

3. The Melancholy In Jazz.8

3.1 The Tragedy of the Environment9

3.2 The Tragedies of Characters10

3.2.1 The Tragedy of Violet.10

3.2.2The Tragedy of Joe11

3.2.3 The Tragedy of Dorcas.13

4. The Complexity In Jazz.14

4.1 The Complexity On Writing Methods.14

4.2 The Complexity On Content. 15

5. Conclusion17

Bibliography.19

Acknowledgments 20