Modernism, Narrative and Postmodernism in Beloved by Toni Morrison.
Beloved by Toni Morrison is a difficult novel.
It is complicated reading with multiple voices.
It is a disturbing tale of violence and cruelty in the face of slavery and oppression.
It is emotionally complex with passages of beauty and passages of darkness and anxiety.
It participates in the great canons of literature of the 20th century.
It derives from modernism and the suggestion of Ezra Pound to “make it new.”
It experiments with elements of narrative reframing the story in elements of different consciousnesses
It complicates the narrative line with multiple personas, some real, some perhaps simulated, marking it as a postmodern vision of reality.
Further, it participates in the often surreal legacy of the gothic and ghost stories.