Toni Morrison is a famous American black woman novelist. She published eight novels and also has a handful works in other genres including drama, nonfiction, short stories, children’s literature, articles, and a libretto. Morrison’s first novel the Bluest Eyes(1970) which talks about a dream of young black girl who wants to have a pair of big and beautiful eyes, established her place in literature. Her third novel Song of Solomon (1977) is a production about the conflicts that the American black people faced in the process of looking for freedom and the loss of their own culture. Morrison used black people's folklore and legend to romance the production and revealed only the black people respect their own national tradition, they can find back who they are, and finally escape from the "new spirit enslavement" after slavery. Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Beloved (1987) is considered as Morrison's masterpiece and one of the best and most popular works in the African-American literature as well. In the fiction, Morrison tells people a story about a black slave woman who has a tragic life but never gives up her faith in self-growth, and reflects the humble position of the black women and their painful process of growth. In 1993, Toni Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She was the first Afro-American writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which makes her one of the most influential writers in America history. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931. Morrison's childhood was filled with African American folklore, music, rituals, and myths. Both of her parents came from sharecropping families, and her father’s family had faced a great deal of discrimination. Morrison’s parents instilled the value of group loyalty and encouraged her passion for reading, learning, and culture, as well as confidence in her own abilities and attributes as woman.
　　Toni Morrison is an outstanding post war American novelist. With her magic imagination and poetic language, Morrison not only delineates the cruelty of historical slavery and white Americans’ continual denial of black people, but also examines black people with the pursuit of individual advancement. In the presentation speech of the Nobel Prize, Professor Sture Allén, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, says “in her depictions of the world of the black people, in life as in legend, Toni Morrison has given the Afro-American people their history back, piece by piece. In this perspective, her work is uncommonly consonant. At the same time, it is richly variegated.” Morrison novels focus on the experience of black Americans. She keep searching the history, culture and spiritual world of black people. Toni Morrison succeeded in modeling the images of black woman and revealing the real life of the American black, especially the black woman. Morrison also tries to find a relationship between literary criticism and black writers. These critiques and studies enable black literature to be heard how it is supposed to be heard, and establish a cultural and academic dialog that keeps black writers from being marginalized. She believes that black people have a rich culture of storytelling to draw upon and that their stories must be heard.
Archetypal theme is an important characteristic in Toni Morrison’s Nobel Lecture. Myths and archetypal literary criticism is a form of criticism based largely on the works of C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell and myth itself. It is a type of critical theory that interprets a text by focusing on recurring myths and archetypes in the narrative, symbols, images, and character types in a literary work. “Arche”, from Greek philosophy, means the principle, cause, source, origin of things, beginning or ultimate principle and “type” means kind. Archetypal criticism was its most popular in the 1950’s and 1960’s, largely due to the work of Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye. Northrop Frye says in the Archetypes of Literature “The myth is the central informing power that gives archetypal significance to the ritual and archetypal narrative to the oracle. Hence the myth is the archetype, though it might be convenient to say myth only when referring to narrative, and archetype when speaking of significance.” James G. Fraser’s myth and anthropology and Carl Gustav Jung’s collective unconsciousness lay the theoretical foundation for archetypal criticism.
　　Archetypes often appear in many forms of literature. The use of archetypes to analyze personality was advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century. In the Nobel Prize lecture, Toni Morrison tells the audience a story of a blind black woman. The lecture can be traced back to some ancient archetypes also. Many archetypes in literature have their roots in mythology. Characters in the Bible or in myths are often considered as archetypes. The characters that Morrison describes in this lecture are given mythic dimensions and elevated above them above ordinary realities. At the very beginning of the Lecture, Toni Morrison says " In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement. ” From the description, we can see the blind black old woman is modeled on the archetypes of Good Mother, and is endowed with a sense of mythical imagination. One day some young people came to visit the old woman. They seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is they stand before her. One of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead." Instead of giving the young people answer, the old woman says nothing at first, and after a long silence, she finally speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.” From this point of view, the black old woman in the story is connected with the bird’s life and death, or we can say the woman has a kind ofpower which controls the bird’s life. With a quality of Good Mother, the black old woman tries to protect the bird. She represents an image that is full of wisdom and sympathy. (责任编辑：南粤论文中心)转贴于南粤论文中心: http://www.nylw.net(代写代发论文_毕业论文带写_广州职称论文代发_广州论文网）