Jazz as the Narrative Mode in Toni Morrison’s Jazz

Abstract

Toni Morrison is the first black American woman writer to receive the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, for her novel Jazz. In this novel, Morrison ventures a unique narrative mode, the mode of Jazz music. The very name Jazz takes one’s imagination to the world of music and entertainment. Music and Fiction are two entirely different genres. The first one depends on oral quality and the second on print. In Jazz, Morrison skillfully relates these two different genres by blending her language into that music harmoniously. Her versatility lies in the unique combination of the vital Jazz music and the untold tragedy of the black community which is upischolar_mained and relegated to the secondary status. Morrison, in Jazz, by using the complexity and various key elements of Jazz like Polyphony, Improvisation etc., depicts the experiences of the black community in the city of New York during the 1920s, known as the Jazz Age.