HISTORICIZING TONY MORRISON’S BELOVED: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD
HISTORICIZING TONY MORRISON’S BELOVED: THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Summary/Abstract: Toni Morrison’s Beloved, although based on a terrible antebellum episode that shook America, is not a historical novel, despite some notable claims to that effect. To come up with a gripping narrative of imaginative engagement with the past, an author like Morrison has to leave out most of the apparently objective facts of history. These facts, far from removing the vividness and pathos of Beloved, provide a framework and a substance in contrast to which a work of fiction is more likely to be appreciated in its ‘biased’ approach to human experience. What follows focuses on the significance of the Railroad Underground in the shaping of the abolitionist ethos in antebellum America, at the time of Margaret Garner’s trial.

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