Recitatif 高等教育出版社 美国文学选读课件.ppt

Company Logo LOGO Recitatif （宣叙） By Toni Morrison Company Logo "Recitatif" is Toni Morrison's only published short story. It was first published in 1983 in Confirmations: An Anthology of African American Women Company Logo Contents About the Title 1 Plot Summary 2 Characterization 3 Themes 4 Significance of Maggie 6 Comparison of the two race 7 Symbolism 5 Company Logo About the title The title alludes to a style of musical declamation that hovers between song and ordinary speech; it is used for dialogic(对话体的) and narrative interludes during operas and oratories. The term “recitatif” also once included the now-obsolete（过时的） meaning, “the tone or rhythm peculiar to any language.” Both of these definitions suggest the story‘s episodic（插曲般的）nature, how each of the story's five sections happens in a register that is different from the respective ordinary lives of its two central characters, Roberta and Twyla. Company Logo The white people: Twyla(the narrator) Mary, The big girls in St. Bonny’s, Twyla’s parents in law etc. Characters in the Story The black people: Roberta, Maggie, Roberta’s mother. Company Logo The story is set over a period of more than 20 years, between the late 1950s and early 1980s. The story‘s vignettes（小插曲）bring together the rhythms of two lives for five, short moments, all of them narrated in Twyla's own voice. The story is, then, in several ways, Twyla's "recitatif." Company Logo Plot summary First encounter Twyla, whose name suggests the famous dancer, Twyla Tharp, and Roberta Fisk first meet within the confines of a state home for children, St. Bonaventure (St. Bonny‘s), because each has been taken away from her mother. Roberta’s mother is sick; Twyla‘s mother “just likes to dance all night.” We learn immediately that the girls look different from one another: one is black, one is white. Despite their initially hostile（怀有敌意的） feelings, they are drawn together because of their similar circumstances. Company Logo