Abstract

It is an obvious fact that in all her work Toni Morrison makes use of narrative tools in order to investigate and explore theoretical issues (social, philosophical, or otherwise) characteristic of the late twentieth century. This does not mean that theories, their usefulness, limits or narrative structuring are the only points of interest; Morrison’s textual endeavours are as much experimental as they are real pieces of narrative research in the esthetics of the novel. Any analysis of Beloved should render an image of this type of fiction concerned with a multifaceted yet unified narrative structure, an exercise in interrogating the very social construction of the black self, its history, and its contemporary, post-slavery predicaments. The present paper is not so much a paper about history or psychology as it is a paper about their narrative enactment and their artistic implementation in Morrison’s text.