Operatic Structures: Considerations of Title and Narration in Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”

Although recent attention to Toni Morrison’s short story “Recitatif” (1983) has moved beyond Morrison’s novel decision to remove racial codes and identifiers from her main characters to reframe the story within conversations about gender and disability studies, such reexaminations risk a reductive representation of the full complexity of the story. This article uses a little-discussed aspect of the narrative to reconsider the oversaturated symbolism of the work: Morrison’s choice of title. The article first engages in a close reading of “Recitatif” to underscore the promise of more recent critical interventions and the key issues that those interventions leave unexamined. By then considering Morrison’s decision to use a term most often associated with opera as the title of a story that has absolutely nothing to do with that art form, the argument enables a discussion that can contain and extend previous discussions. Moreover, by looking at how recitative works structurally within the genre, something no scholarship has considered, the article argues for specific and novel ways that Morrison intends her audience to read (or reread) the story.