Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition Transforming American Culture

In this volume, Roynon explores Toni Morrison's widespread engagement with ancient Greek and Roman tradition. Discussing all ten of her published novels to date, as well as her extensive non-fiction, she examines the ways in which classical myth, literature, history, social practice, and religious ritual make their presence felt in Morrison's writing. Combining original and detailed close readings with broader theoretical discussions, which contexualize thosereadings within current debates about the politics of race and gender, she argues that Morrison's classical allusiveness is characterized by a strategic ambivalence. Adopting a thematic, rather thannovel-by-novel approach, Roynon demonstrates that Morrison's classicism is fundamental to the transformative critique of American culture that her work effects.