The Use of Western Literary Traditions in Toni Morrison's Novels

This paper explores Toni Morrison’s use of Western literary traditions such as fairy tales and Scandinavian myths in her novels, with emphasis on Song of Solomon, her third novel. While Morrison utilizes such traditions in her first and second novels, she does so only sparingly. In contrast, she scatters images and references taken from Western literary sources throughout Song of Solomon. After this work, Morrison rarely uses them in her novels, even though she has considerable knowledge of them, having been a classics major at Howard University. In this paper, I consider the novelist’s purposes of using these traditions in her works.