 |
customer@davidpublishing.com |
 |
3275638434 |
 |
 |
| Paper Publishing WeChat |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
YUAN Yiping
Full-Text PDF
XML 1256 Views
DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2022.02.006
University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, China
In The Bluest Eye, Morrison describes a black society under a deformed aesthetic system. This aesthetic mode is a kind of ideology constructed by the white society through the political system and power. Most of the characters in the book are tamed by this mainstream idea: white skin and blue eyes-oriented aesthetic, which is also the tragedy origin of the protagonist Pecola. Foucault’s theory of discourse power profoundly discusses the formation and effects of discourse power, a new way of controlling the lower class. This paper, based on the two operations of disciplinary power, the effects of discourse power, and the resistance of it, interprets how the white aesthetic becomes the mainstream aesthetic, its oppression on the black individuals and groups and their resistance of such power through the three characters of Peal, a brown girl, Pecola, a black girl and Claudia, the narrator, in the hope that the black race can acquire awakening consciousness, break the discourse power behind the mainstream aesthetic, and realize the self-confidence of skin color and race.
The Bluest Eye, Foucault, discourse power, color aesthetic
Beaulieu, E. A. (2003). The Toni Morrison encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Press.
Foucault, M. (1978). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Panthenon Books.
Hu, J. (2006). Self-hatred of African Americans in The bluest eye. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching, (1), 95-99.
Liu, S. M. (2020). Interpretation of The bluest eye from the perspective of cultural hegemony. Literary Education (I), (5), 68-69.
Meng, Y. (2020). Exploring the source of Pecola’s tragedy in The bluest eye. Journal of Culture, (10), 93-95.
Morrison, T. (1994). The bluest eye. New York: Penguin.
Morrison, T. (2007). The bluest eye. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
Muhi, M. T. (2010). The quest for an ideal beauty in Toni Morrison’s The bluest eyes. J. of College of Education for Women, 21(2), 550-564.
Peng, M. (2020). Female’s identity dilemma: Two marginalized heroines in Wide Sargasso Sea and The bluest eye. Open Journal of Social Sciences, (8), 324-334.
Su, J. (2012). Interpretation of Toni Morrison’s The bluest eye from a postcolonial perspective. Short Story Edition, (24), 75-76.
Wang, J. P. (2000). Barriers in heart prison—Symbolic images in The bluest eye. Foreign Literature Research, (3), 104-107.
Wang, S. R., & Wu, X. Y. (2000). Black soul under the impact of white culture—A comment on Toni Morrison’s novel The bluest eye. Journal of Henan Normal University (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition), (3), 124-129.
Xie, Q. (1999). Distortion and variation of The bluest eye. Research on Foreign Literature, (4), 104-111.
Yang, R. J. (1998). Readers are a part of the whole text—On the structural art of The bluest eye. Foreign Literature Research, (2), 75-80.
Yuan, B. (2018). Struggle and survival in cultural clash: A case study of Pecola in The bluest eye. English Language and Literature Studies, 8(1), 104-108.
Zhang, R. W. (2002). The root causes of Pecola’s tragedy. Journal of Sichuan Institute of Foreign Languages, (5), 49-52.
Zhang, R. W. (2004). Discourse structure in The bluest eye. Foreign Literature Research, (4), 62-67+172.