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영어

This study discusses Toni Morrison’s remembering in view of Africans and African Americans’ traditional conception of time. Morrison’s remembering is inextricably laced with Africans’ and African Americans’ traditional conception of the past which is divided into the Sasa and the Zamani periods in terms of dimension and category. In Song of Solomon, Morrison’s characters and speakers, such as Pilate Dead, Macon Dead, Reverend Cooper, Circe, and Susan Byrd, do not leave the past behind. They relive it based on Africans’ and African Americans’ concepts of the past, such as ‘the Sasa period’ of remembering that lets one recall his or her past in the present tense, and ‘the Zamani period’ of myth that goes beyond one’s recalling dimension. More specifically, it is the experiences of the Sasa period that are relived through remembering. However, in Tar Baby, Morrison’s character and speaker, Gideon can’t relive the three-centuries-old origin of blind people that is involved in the Zamani, beyond individuals’ recalling dimension. Therefore, when Gideon relives the origin story, he completely depends on a fishermen’s tale that has been spread by word of mouth.