Their Eyes Were Watching God Annotated

The MLA database returned 168 bibliographic entries containing the subject heading Their look Were observation God. In choosing which entries to include in this annotated bibliography, my objective was to represent as numerous interpretive approaches to the text edition as possible in order to exemplify the exp onential expansion in the scope of Hurston studies in recent years.Also, because of the condensed clipping frame of this class, I only reviewed items that argon available to UAH students on campus or online, although this criterion excluded several signifi erectt critical responses to the novel. Unless otherwise noted, the full texts of completely of the articles listed here suffer be retrieved via EBSCOhost. Ashe, Bertram D. Why Dont He Like My pilus? Constructing African-American Standards of Beauty in Toni Morrisons Song of Solomon And Zora Neale Hurstons Their eye Were watching God. African American Review 29. (Winter 1995) 579-93. Because of the strong social pressure to conform to predefined notions of pompous (read European) beauty that the dominant finishing exerts on tout ensemble American women, discolor women make up historically been judged as attractive or unattractive concord to the degree to which their facial features, hair, and skin color conform to European norms. In Their Eyes, although Hurston describes Janie as having light skin and long hair, Janie does not isolate herself from saturnine African Americans.Janies hair is linked to her self-esteem and her engagement in the community, and as such, it becomes the battleground of her struggles with Joe Starks. Janies choice of hairstyle after Starks death (one thick braid swinging well below her waist) can be interpreted as a phallic image that metaphorically refers to her newfound power and self-determination. Brogan, Jacqueline Vaught. The Hurston/Walker/Vaughn Connection womens rightist Strategies in American Fiction. Womens Studies 28. 2 (1999) 185-201.In positin g an interpretive framework for Elizabeth Vaughns 1990 novel, Many Things Have Happened Since He Died, Brogan discusses the relationship between Walkers The Color royal and Hurstons Their Eyes. She notes that some(prenominal) novels lay down been criticized for failing as realistic fiction, both can be interpreted as romances in the vein of Shakespe ars The Tempest and The Winters Tale, and both deal thematically with the awakening of an abused female. Curren, Erik D. Should Their Eyes Have Been Watching God? Hurstons Use of sacred Experience and Gothic Horror. African American Review 29. (Spring 1995) 17-26. Critics have not sufficiently accounted for the complexity of Their Eyes, and many analyses have followed Alice Walkers brawl that Janie is a depiction of racial health. A less biased learning of the text reveals much tragedy and horror that few critical interpretations have addressed. The novels backing refers to the incipient slave mentality of African Americans, de monstrated by the field hands reversion to enslaved patterns of behavior in the face of the hurricane. Paralleling the figurative body of Hurstons Mules and Men, God is likened to a slavemaster in the Their Eyes.Hurston subverts gothic conventions in the service of affirming the importance of kin grouplore. Davis, Rose Parkman. Zora Neale Hurston An Annotated Bibliography and Reference Guide. Westport, CT Greenwood P, 1997. This volume presents an excellently balanced and exhaustive compilation of Hurston scholarship through and through 1996. ( operational in UAH Library Reference section no circulation) Donlon, Jocelyn Hazelwood. Porches Stories Power spacial and Racial Intersections in Faulkner and Hurston. Journal of American Culture 19. 4 (Winter 1996) 95-111.The porch serves as the point of intersection for spatial, social, and racial in Southern culture and literature, as exemplified by Hurtsons Their Eyes and Faulkners Absalom Absalom. In Their Eyes, porches are stand fo rd with the ecesis of a community voice. Janies involuntary exile from the front porch of Starks warehousing reflects her alienation from the community and her ensuing loneliness. Starks porches also function as a stage on which Janie is displayed. Janies conduct experiences ultimately transform porches from bossy places to authentic community spaces. duCille, Ann. Stoning the Romance Passion, Patriarchy, and the Modern Marriage Plot. The yoke Convention Sex, Text and Tradition in Black Womens Fiction. refreshing York Oxford UP, 1993. 110-142. This chapter discusses the treatment of marriage in Their Eyes and several other modernist texts by African American women writers. Although many interpretations of the novel agree that Their Eyes is by and large focused on the issues of cheat, sex, and marriage, no critical consensus has been gived as to Hurstons feelings on these topics.Janies epiphanic orgasm under the pear tree is likened to the biblical excogitation story, with Janies act of kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor equated with original sin. Feminist readings of the text that view Their Eyes as a womans quest for and movement of selfhood are problematic because both Janie and the narrator unornamented their continued domination by patriarchal ideology and romantic mythology obliterate-to-end the narrative. (Available in UAH library) Hattenhauer, Darryl. Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God. Explicator 50. 2 (Winter 1992) 111-3.Recent criticism of Their Eyes fails to consume the notion that Janie may be dying of rabies at the end of the novel, which is bolstered by the foreshadowing of her death that occurs throughout the text. afternoon tea Cake bites Janie in advance he dies, and she seems not to have sought the treatment that eluded teatime Cake. Further, Janies shooting of Tea Cake cannot rightfully be termed self-defense in the legal term, since she could have escaped Tea Cake by run away. The imperfect, white-dominated judicial syst em is partially culpable for failing to recognize this. Haurykiewicz, Julie A. From Mules to femininity Speech and Silence in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Southern literary Journal 29. 2 (Spring 1997) 45-61. Hurston employs the recurrent mule theme in Their Eyes as a means of commenting on the disparity between spoken language and pipe down in the life of Janie and her emotional development. The process that occurs in the text is not that of moving from dependence to liberty, as so many critics have asserted, but rather, a metamorphosis from mule to muliebrity (the state or condition of being a woman or possessing full womanlike powers).Significant traits of mules that figure symbolically in Their Eyes are mules combine pipeline and resultant reproductive sterility, mules historical role as beasts of burden, and the stubbornness and excitability that often characterize mules disposition. Hurston depicts mules as subversive trickster figures in Mules and Men, and this tie c an be extended into Their Eyes. The lack of mule imaging in the second half of the book is simultaneous with Janies burgeoning ability to conduct herself in the community. Hubbard, Dolan. . . . Ah Said Ahd Save De Text for You Recontextualizing the Sermon to Tell (Her)story in Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God. African American Review 27. 2 (Summer 1993) 167-79. Janie uses techniques of religion-based oral expression to tell her story and valorize extant black culture, a position that was rare among other African American writers in the 1930s. nannys statement to Janie about her own unfulfilled desire to prophesy is the impetus behind Janies narrative. Pheoby undergoes a religious transformation in he end of the narrative, and she can be interpreted as Janies disciple. Johnson, Maria. The World in a Jug and the Stopper in Her make Their Eyes as Blues Performance. African American Review 32. 3 (Fall 1998) 401-15. The aesthetic principles of blues shape Janies tr ansformation in Their Eyes. some(prenominal) thematically and structurally, the novel is similar to the songs that African American women like Bessie metalworker popularized in the 1920s and 1930s. Blues songs of this era often used bee imagery to connote sexual intimacy and mule imagery to oppression.All of Janies love relationships function merely as the vehicle through which she attains selfhood the men themselves are dispensable. Even Tea Cake can be seen as alone a stanza in the blues song which Janie sings to Pheoby. King, Sigrid. Naming and Power in Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God. Black American Literature fabrication 24. 4 (Winter 1990) 683-97. The relationship between appointment and power in African American culture and literature is clearly evince in Their Eyes. passim Janies life, her voice and development of selfhood have been circumscribed by the call that others have imposed upon her.In the text, naming by others can usually be interpreted as exertion of power and domination. Janies transition to autonomy is duplicateed by her willingness to rename herself and things around her. Unlike the limiting and destructive naming that characterized her previous relationships, the positive nature of her union with Tea Cake is expressed by their playful and positive use of language together. After Tea Cakes death, Janie freely renames people and things in her environment, suggesting her freedom from the power-based system of naming that had silenced her.Kodat, Catherine Gunther. Biting the Hand that Writes You Southern African-American family unit Narrative and the Place of Women in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Haunted Bodies sexual urge and Southern Texts. Eds. Anne Goodwyn Jones and Susan V. Donaldson. Charlottesville UP of Virginia, 1997. 319-42. The fact that Janie kills Tea Cake in Their Eyes has not received enough critical attention. Tea Cakes bite can be interpreted as a disclosure of the tension between the quest fo r proto-feminist autonomy and the Southern black folk usage Hurston uses as her mode of exposition in the text.The feminist policy-making agenda has led to widespread resistance to the textual lack of musical accompaniment for characterizing Tea Cakes and Janies union as ideal. Although Janie does make headway an authentic voice at the end of the narrative, the inference that she had to trade her life for it problematizes the received interpretive matrix that figures the text as a fortunate quest for self. (Available in UAH Library) Lowe, John. Laughin Up a World Their Eyes Were Watching God and the (Wo)Man of Words. Jump at the SunZora Neale Hurstons Cosmic Comedy.Chicago U of Illinois P, 1994. 156-204. Janie is associated with Janus throughhout Their Eyes, both by being described as figuratively two-headed, flavour backward and forward simultaneously, and being symbolically linked to liminal realms such as doors and thresholds. Through folk-based humor, Janie magically trans forms this communal energy into something constructive and unitingher story. As in many ethnic literatures, humor plays the role of expanding language when habitual methods of discourse are not sufficient to express the complexities of a situation. Available in UAH library) McGowan, Todd. Liberation and Domination Their Eyes Were Watching God and the phylogenesis of Capitalism. MELUS 24. 1 (Spring 1999) 109-29. One element that accounts for the recent critical success of Their Eyes, which was met with mixed reviews by its contemporary critics, is the nascent poststructuralism of the text, well-nigh strongly evidenced in the emphasis on play and the decentering of binary systems of thought and language that parallel Janies transition to autonomous selfhood.However, recent poststructuralist readings of the novel have not taken into account the full import of Janies less-than-ideal relationship with Tea Cake, as well as his death at her hands. These elements of the novel equate lib eration with submission, which can be likened to the type of heightened subjectivity that is a trademark of capitalist society. Ultimately, Janie attains and then quashes her momentary realization that in order to achieve freedom one must destroy that which refuses loss. Racine, Maria J. Voice and Interiority in Zora Neale Hurstons Their Eyes Were Watching God. African American Review 28. 2 (Summer 1994) 283-93. Hurstons use of free indirect discourse allows her to render fully the intimate thought processes of those characters who have not yet achieved an external speaking voice, most notably, Janie. In a narrative that is focused thematically on the achievement of selfhood as emblematized by voice, this is a necessary narrative strategy. Rather than undermining Janies incipient voice, as Stepto and others have famously ontended, Janies strategic silence at her trial is a manifestation of the fusion of the voices of Janie and the narrator, heretofore distinct. Janie has assimil ated the sapience and insight of the narrators voice and she can now attack it as she chooses. Sheppard, David M. Living by Comparisons Janie and her Discontents. English Language Notes 30. 2 (December 1992) 63-76. A psychoanalytic reading of Their Eyes reveals the God of the books title to be a manifestation of a classic Freudian amaze figure.Hurstons education during the years in which Freudianpsychoanalytic theory first became wide disseminated in the academy virtually assures her exposure to its tenets. Killicks, Starks, and Tea Cake are all manifestations of the controlling father figure conflated in the text with God. By opposition, Janie is forced into a suspended childhood that precludes her emotional development. Trombold, John. The Minstrel order of battle Goes to the Great War Zora Neale Hurstons Mass Cultural Other. MELUS 24. 1 (Spring 1999) 85-108.Their Eyes can be read as emphasizing the importance of folk culture and oral tradition to the sustainment of Black cul ture, almost to the exclusion of all other factors. In later writings, she modifies this view to recenter Black oral tradition as the cultural heritage of the nation as a whole, as evidenced by her inclusion of white characters in her last make novel. Walker, Alice. Looking for Zora. In Search of Our Mothers Gardens Womanist Prose. New York Harcourt shake Jovanovich, 1983. 93-116.