Sacraments of Memory
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A Mercy
A01=Erin Michael Salius
Antirealist
Author_Erin Michael Salius
authors
Beloved
Black Power
Category=DS
Category=DSBH
Category=QRMB1
Catholic margin
Catholicism and Slavery in Contemporary African American Literature
Charles Johnson
church
civil rights
contemporary
Enlightenment
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_non-fiction
Erin Michael Salius
Ernest Gaines
Eucharist
historiography
legacy of slavery
Leon Forrest
Memory
narratives of slavery
Orlando Patterson
Oxherding Tale
Phyllis Alesia Perry
postmodernist
race
rememory
sacraments
Sacraments of Memory
Social Death
spirit possession
Stigmata
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman
Toni Morrison
Two Wings to Veil My Face
Vatican II
Product details
- ISBN 9780813068893
- Weight: 205g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 04 Oct 2022
- Publisher: University Press of Florida
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Catholic themes and imagery in the work of writers including Toni
Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles Johnson
Sacraments of Memory is the first book to focus on Catholic themes and imagery in African American literature. Erin Michael Salius discovers striking elements of the religion in neo-slave narratives written by Toni Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles Johnson, among others. Examining the emergence of this major literary genre following Vatican II and amidst the Black Power and civil rights movements, she uncovers the presence of Catholic rituals and mysteries—including references to the Eucharist, Augustinian theology, spirit possession, and stigmata. These textual references occur alongside and in tension with criticisms of the Church's political and social policies.
Salius offers a nuanced reading of Beloved that interprets the novel in light of Toni Morrison's affiliation with the religion. She argues that Morrison, and the other novelists in this study, draw on a Catholic countertradition in American literature that resists Enlightenment rationality. She highlights allusions to Catholic tropes such as the connections between spirit possession and the hijacking of Jane's narrative voice in Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Salius also identifies Augustinian theology on the prescience of God in the flash-forward narrative techniques used in Edward P. Jones's The Known World.
These authors use Catholicism to challenge the historical realism of past slave autobiographies and the conventional story of American slavery. Ultimately, Salius contends that this tradition enables these novelists to imagine and express radically different ways of remembering the past.
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Sacraments of Memory is the first book to focus on Catholic themes and imagery in African American literature. Erin Michael Salius discovers striking elements of the religion in neo-slave narratives written by Toni Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles Johnson, among others. Examining the emergence of this major literary genre following Vatican II and amidst the Black Power and civil rights movements, she uncovers the presence of Catholic rituals and mysteries—including references to the Eucharist, Augustinian theology, spirit possession, and stigmata. These textual references occur alongside and in tension with criticisms of the Church's political and social policies.
Salius offers a nuanced reading of Beloved that interprets the novel in light of Toni Morrison's affiliation with the religion. She argues that Morrison, and the other novelists in this study, draw on a Catholic countertradition in American literature that resists Enlightenment rationality. She highlights allusions to Catholic tropes such as the connections between spirit possession and the hijacking of Jane's narrative voice in Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Salius also identifies Augustinian theology on the prescience of God in the flash-forward narrative techniques used in Edward P. Jones's The Known World.
These authors use Catholicism to challenge the historical realism of past slave autobiographies and the conventional story of American slavery. Ultimately, Salius contends that this tradition enables these novelists to imagine and express radically different ways of remembering the past.
Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Erin Michael Salius is assistant dean of Metropolitan College and director of Summer Term at Boston University.
