Abstract
This discussion explores the intersection of ritual ecology and the gothic narrative in Toni Morrison’s Love, focusing on water’s symbolism and connection to the novel’s main avatars. By including my circum-Atlantic understanding, this knowledge explains how colonial and decolonizing rituals shape human agency. Ritual ecology posits that rituals are influenced by more than just human actions, encompassing objects, organisms, and environmental phenomena. In Love, Morrison portrays characters whose actions are governed by celestial forces, reflecting the complexities of African American life and the ebbs and flows of (post)captivity. The novel’s Gothic elements are accentuated through the gloomy tale of the Cosey family, where biological energies and uncanny decay dictate agency. This study gears toward combining ritual ecology with a colonial gothic description, emphasizing the stature of atmosphere in writing rituals. The argument then shifts into the archetypal image of the ocean as a source of life, illustrating the protagonists’ (otherworldly) journeys and their innate relation to the sea. This lens dissects Morrison’s vocation as a holistic embodiment of eco-critical awareness and practices within ritually-infused contexts, integrating perceptions of the environment, constructs of being, and tendencies of human agency as crucial to portraying women as mediums for perspicuity.
Presenters
Ikea JohnsonAssistant Professor, English, Communications and Media, Salve Regina University, Rhode Island, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Toni Morrison, Love, Ritual, Ecology, Embodiment, Archetype, Water, Threshold, Medium
