An Analysis Of Home From The Perspective Of Spatial Criticism

Toni Morrison,one of the most outstanding contemporary novelists who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993,was the first black American woman writer to be honored such a prestigious award.Home is the tenth novel debuting in 2012.Through the description of frequent changes of space,Home tells a story of brother Frank and his sister Cee who have undergone migration,leaving home and going home in their different stages of life.Spatial Criticism emerged in the late 20th century.It developed itself with cultural geography and absorbed postmodern literary theories like cultural studies and formed its theoretical foundation.Henry Lefebvre was one of the founders of spatial theory,who made the opening salvo of "spatial turn".Lefebvre took a comprehensive thinking of space from the perspective of economy,politics,ideology and class struggle,thus space was endowed with social characteristics.Lefebvre's spatial theory is used in this thesis to analyze the diverse cultures contained in space,to explore the social and cultural properties of the space in the text,and to reveal the multidimensional meanings of literary space from the aspects of physical space,psychological space and social space.This thesis consists of six chapters.Chapter One briefly introduces the author Toni Morrison,the novel Home and the reviews of the relevant research achievements at home and abroad.Chapter Two briefly clarifies the development of spatial criticism and makes a specific explanation of Lefebvre's spatial theory.Chapter Three to Five are the main body of this thesis,in which the spatial characteristics involved in Home is presented from the following three aspects,specifically,the rootlessness of blacks in physical space,the process of self-pursuit in psychological space and the struggle between races in social space.This thesis tries to reveal the tough living situation of blacks,the hardship of self-pursuit and the arduous struggle of revolt under the spatial oppression through the analysis of the physical space on which blacks rely for existence,the psychological space in which Frank and Cee accomplish inner changes and the social space which is awash with complex power relations.The sixth chapter draws a conclusion that the black individual should join in black community and integrate into the ethnic collectivity to preserve lives.The black should inherit black culture to realize the reconstruction of cultural identities under the impact of the white mainstream culture.Besides,the black should be closely linked together to explore their ethnic development,to strive for their living space,to establish their national homeland under the racial discrimination,and finally to rewrite the fate of enslavement and reverse the history of discrimination.