toni morrison’s the bluest eye...dick and jane reading primersfrom the 1940s-1970s, millions of...
TRANSCRIPT
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye
Lecture 2
Monday 08 October 12
‘The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time’
– Toni Morrison
Monday 08 October 12
Lecture Outline
1. The narrative frame: The Dick and Jane primer
2. ‘Autumn’
- Claudia’s prolepsis: loss of innocence, a community in turmoil
3. Cultural images of whiteness
- Dick and Jane- Shirley temple- The Hollywood ‘screen sirens’
4. Claudia’s rejection of white values and norms
Monday 08 October 12
The narrative frame (p.1-2)
Monday 08 October 12
Monday 08 October 12
Dick and Jane reading primersFrom the 1940s-1970s, millions of American school children learnt to read with Dick and Jane. The opening lines of The Bluest Eye reproduce the typical Dick and Jane narrative.
Monday 08 October 12
Claudia’s prolepsis (p.3)
Monday 08 October 12
Monday 08 October 12
Prolepsisdefinition
A ‘flashforward’ that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story. A prolepsis is often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future. It may reveal significant parts of the story that have not yet occurred, but will occur later in the narrative.
9Monday 08 October 12
Shirley Temple and Bill ‘Bo Jangles’ Robinson appeared together in a number of mainstream Hollywood films in the 1940s
Monday 08 October 12
The ‘universal love’ of Shirley Temple (p.12-13)
Monday 08 October 12
The Hollywood ‘Screen Sirens’Jean Harlow and Greta Garbo were among Hollywood’s glamorous ‘leading ladies’ of the 1940s.
Monday 08 October 12
Claudia’s rejection of white values and norms (p.13-16)
Monday 08 October 12