The Quilting Aesthetics In Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Toni Morrison is one of the most important female writers in contemporaryAmerican literature. There are many similarities between Toni Morrison’s literarycreation and the process of quilting. They take the artistic form of quilt and representunique artistic style and rich aesthetic implications. The representational forms andaesthetic meaning of “quilting” have different expressional forms in her novels. Thisthesis aims to analyze Beloved systematically based on quilting aesthetics implications ofquilting respectively from the aspect of survival background, historical background, andsocial background.There are three parts in this thesis.In introduction, the development of quilt works and quilting aesthetics areintroduced, along with “seeking for fusion from fragmentation”.The second part as the body of the whole thesis, interpret the quilting aesthetics inBeloved, respectively from the aspect of survival background, historical background, andsocial background.Chapter One explores issues of slavery base on survival background, the agonizingstigma on black people, as well as arduous and tortuous resistance of the Black. Thenovel not only replays bitter history of black people, but also reveals the progressiveprocesses of conquering the psychological trauma and haze caused by slave history.Chapter Two analyzes the quilting aesthetics through historical background.Patchwork compresses history, makes the reality more significant and colorful byre-memory. Beloved sews the past and present together, clears the reality and illusory,which make the novel not only face up to the history, and looking forward to the future.Only in this way can they find the ego of themselves, and bravely encounter the future.Chapter Three analyzes the quilting aesthetics through social background. Showsthe constantly pursues of Africa-American into the mainstream society. The history ofdevelopment is a process keeps bleeding and constant healing, and also the process to berefused, but always looking forward to the fusion. This process sometimes tenuous, maybe time-consuming, but also magnificent. The lost of Beloved were merely the bones of abody that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future, they must blendinto the whole society, and make a harmonious environment to survive. The third part summarizes the whole thesis by reflecting the reality and thinkingabout the future. In Beloved, Morrison is standing on the height of the race to build adiversity of culture pattern, seeking a new space for survival and development for theblack people and their culture. Morrison’s quilting aesthetic reveal to us to seeking fusionfrom fragments, keeping the cultural diversity and identity.Therefore, Beloved inspiresthe20th century American readers as well as to the future generations.