The affective phenomenology of beyond-ment and the narrative voice of Toni Morrison's Jazz
| dc.contributor.author | Hagedorn, Kara | |
| dc.contributor.supervisor | Bancroft, Corinne | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-04-30T22:38:52Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-04-30T22:38:52Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2025 | |
| dc.degree.department | Department of English | |
| dc.degree.level | Master of Arts MA | |
| dc.description.abstract | This project outlines a new method for understanding the affective phenomenology of narrators in literary fiction and I demonstrate its application through Toni Morrison's novel Jazz (1992). When this method is applied to literary fiction, it assumes that there is a spatial-temporality to the narrator's emotions, which produces their sense of embodiment and the narrative's trajectory as well. Furthermore, this method demonstrates how the sense of embodiment of Jazz's narrator is the Jazz Age itself. Affective phenomenology is a theory that originates from Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (2012), Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology (2006), Teresa Brennan's Transmission of Affect (2004), and Eve Sedgwick's Touching Feeling (2003). Additionally, this project demonstrates the affective phenomenology of Jazz's narrator by referencing Toni Morrison's own reflections on the novel too. This project approaches a pivotal moment in Jazz when the narrator admits that their emotions have affected their "imagining" the characters disingenuously. Here, I demonstrate how the feelings of loss, hostility, and bereavement make the narrator see the characters inauthentically. It is here that I demonstrate how their realization ignites their imagination. It is in this moment that the narrator senses the beyond-ment of their emotions and situates themselves in their own authenticity. This realization then causes the narrator to move towards a future that originates from the past, the site of their authenticity. This method invites scholars to be curious about how the emotions of a narrator's voice produce the spatial-temporality of the narrative and the futurity of the fictional world. | |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Graduate | |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1828/22083 | |
| dc.language | English | eng |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.rights | Available to the World Wide Web | |
| dc.subject | Affect | |
| dc.subject | Phenomenology | |
| dc.subject | Emotions | |
| dc.subject | Toni Morrison | |
| dc.subject | American literature | |
| dc.subject | Literary fiction | |
| dc.subject | Narratology | |
| dc.subject | Beyond-ment | |
| dc.subject | Unreliability | |
| dc.title | The affective phenomenology of beyond-ment and the narrative voice of Toni Morrison's Jazz | |
| dc.type | Thesis |