Rethinking History and Black Identity: An Examination of Toni Morrison's Paradise and Beloved through the Lens of New Historicism

Abstract

History is arguably the study of human history as recorded in written records that people have left behind. However, biased, incomplete, and partial historical records and documents can leave gaps in our knowledge of the past. History is therefore incomplete. Toni Morrison has attempted to recreate history and reinterpret the world from the perspectives of experience, culture, and nationality in her historical novels. As a writer, Toni Morrison feels compelled to acknowledge the gaps in history and to rewrite it in her books. Thus, re-patterning actual and fictional materials to re-enact and reconstruct the reality of a historical past that might not otherwise be reached, becomes an irreversible task for Morrison. Morrison believes that it is necessary to rewrite history with an inventive approach in order to discover the overlooked areas. But despite their appearance as historical witnesses and quasi-documentaries, Morrison's novels portray history as narrative, sometimes skewed on purpose, sometimes fantastical. In order to better understand how Toni Morrison reframes history and examines Black identity in her books Paradise and Beloved, this article will be using the New Historicist approach as a theoretical tool in the research.