童妮‧摩里森《爵士樂》與《愛》中黑人音樂的中介與意義

Abstract

本論文探討童妮‧摩里森在《爵士樂》與《愛》兩本小說中，以黑人音樂傳統為基礎，所呈現出的美非小說形式。第一章藉由非洲傳統音樂美學與社群觀念的研究，檢視黑人音樂傳統中的概念，並指出摩里森的寫作策略，是以音樂傳統觀點出發，因此小說中的主題可追朔到非洲根源的文化傳統。第二章探究《爵士樂》中，爵士樂的概念如何延續非洲文化傳統，以及摩里森以爵士樂鼓動小說中的人物，以「合奏音樂」作為再造黑人社群的方法。摩里森將小說人物安排在一塊爵士音樂的「記憶遺址」，以喚起他們過去的回憶及對音樂的感知能力。隨著爵士音樂驅使小說人物互動，在共同經驗與情感分享中再造黑人社群，摩里森也同時創造了她自己的文學社群。第三章究查摩里森在《愛》中如何檢視爵士音樂，以「咆伯」爵士曲風反思「搖擺」曲風中傳統概念的萎靡。小說的敘事結構利用故事中的女性角色對比爾‧柯西不同的愛慕形式，表現咆伯樂風的「不協調」特色。以比爾‧柯西為遺忘傳統的代表，L則象徵傳統，聯繫柯西家族中的女人，並促使她們在分享與互相關懷中改變人生。《愛》反省《爵士樂》中對爵士音樂的樂觀態度，為摩里森展現黑人音樂傳統不同層面的手法，而兩本小說更呈現出自詡為黑人音樂傳統繼承者的摩里森，在美非文學中的發展與成就。This thesis explores how Toni Morrison demonstrates her idea of an African American novel form in Jazz and Love on the basis of a Black musical tradition. Chapter One examines the concept of the Black music tradition by drawing on studies of African musical aesthetics and communal philosophy. Central themes and narrative strategies in Toni Morrison’s fiction refer to a tradition associated with musical practices that can be traced back to African cultural roots. As presented in Jazz that jazz music perpetuates the African cultural heritage, Chapter Two looks into how jazz music motivates the characters in the novel to take up “music-making” as a means of community re-establishment. Morrison sets the characters within a jazz musical “site of memory” to evoke memories of their past and a sensibility embedded in a music tradition. As jazz music instigates the characters to interact with one another as to remake a Black community with shared experience and feelings, Morrison creates her own literary community by her novel. Chapter Three investigates Morrison’s scrutiny on the diluting effects of tradition of jazz music in “swing” from the perspective of “bebop” manifested in Love. While the novel’s narrative structure reflect a bebop characteristic of “dissonance” demonstrated in the female characters’ diverse ways of love for Bill Cosey, L serves as a traditional power to connect and further transform the lives of the Cosey women by evoking a sense of sharing and care for each other. As Love revises the positive attitude toward jazz music in Jazz, the two novels seen together reveal Morrison’s development as an African American writer and an inheritor of the Black musical tradition.