Songs Of The Bluesmen And Blues-women

African American oral tradition plays such an important role both in African American culture and its literary tradition that without a good knowledge about the oral tradition, it is almost impossible to understand the African American literary works thoroughly. Therefore, it is also not exaggerating to say that without some background knowledge on the blues, an important part of the African American oral tradition, there is no possibility to give the African America literary works a complete interpretation. Like the blues singers, the blues authors like Toni Morrison weave stories of black bluesmen and blues-women and the technical strategies together, making such extraordinary literary works as Jazz, Invisible Man, and so on. This thesis expounds the blues characters of Toni Morrison's Jazz from the aesthetic and the thematic perspectives.The introduction of the thesis gives a brief explanation about Morrison and her works, and the influence of the oral tradition from her family and the black communities in her early ages.The first chapter makes some explanation of the African American oral tradition and blues, pointing out several reasons why this oral tradition is handed down and developed in America and trying to picture the blues from the perspectives of its origin, its different forms, its themes, and its expressive power.The second chapter analyses the male character and the female characters in Jazz. They live different kinds of blues life, Dorcas pursuing a romantic bluesy life, Violet's life being distorted into "violent" and crazy blues life, Joe being always in search for a complete identity, but in vain.The third chapter discusses Jazz from the aesthetic point of view. By manipulating skillfully such techniques as improvisation, repetition, call-and-response pattern, which are often used by blues and jazz singers, and a special narrator as well, Morrison succeeds in composing a literary work extremely similar to a blues song, or many blues songs interweaving together.Based on the analysis in the previous chapters, the following chapter moves on to the discussion on the themes of Jazz, disclosing how Morrison inserts the elements of blues into the themes of her work. The first is the migration of the black people from the south to the north, which also recurs again and again in blues songs. The second theme is that music is regarded as a tool to remember, to be connected with their ancestors, and to be cured psychologically. The magic City gives the black people dramatic energy and opportunity to earn money, but at the same time they feel isolated and displaced. When they move to the City they bring their music with them together. So the music becomes a way for them to let out their explanation of the City.Blues may be tragic and depressing, telling pathetic stories about the black people. But it is never pessimistic. The black people choose to pour out their unsayable experience through blues not to gain the tears and sympathy of the audience but their respect. What Morrison is doing through her works is the same. She is always trying to give voice to the bluesmen and blues-women, to make the unsaid said, and the unheard heard throughout the world.