Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Past-On Stories: History, Ontology, And The Magically Real -- Morrison And Allende, On Call, P. Foreman

P. Gabrielle Foreman

The relation between ontology and naming is explicitly figured in both Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon. Morrison locates the defining power in speech and listening, survival skills quite distinct from talking and passive hearing. Allende subverts the Adamic power of literal naming and so posits a new genesis. In both novels, women become the site of a history that survives and so nurtures the present.