Baker, Houston A. “To Move without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce in Ralph Ellison’s Trueblood Episode.” PMLA, vol. 98, no. 5, 1983, 828–845. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/462262.
Baker argues that the Trueblood episode blurs the line between folklore and literary art that Ellison draws in his critical work. Trueblood also consolidates supposed “public” and “private” Afro-American experience. Baker believes the Trueblood episode is “meta expressive” in that it references and comments on multiple other narratives, including narratives within the novel and narratives in fields other than literature. By focusing on these narratives, Baker effectively ignores questions of gender.
Doane, Janice and Devon Hodges. Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire. The University of Michigan Press, 2001. Print.
In their book, Doane and Hodges focus on father-daughter incest specifically. They argue that the idea of incest is often otherized and seen as only happening in fantasy, which discredits and prevents those involved in incest from being heard truthfully. In Chapter 2, Doane and Hodges focus on incest in Invisible Man and The Bluest Eye, asserting that Morrison responded to Ellison’s paternalistic depiction of incest by giving Pecola a voice. Doane and Hodges define African American incest as uniquely framed under paternalism/slave narratives, which serve to blame the relatively powerless for their suffering.
Grogan, Christine. “Morrison Responds to the Psychological Community in The Bluest Eye.” Father-Daughter Incest in Twentieth-Century American Literature: The Complex Trauma of the Wound and the Voiceless. Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2016. 75-94. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2016383186&site=ehost-liVe.
In Chapter Three of her book on father-daughter incest in twentieth-century American literature, Christine Grogan compares Ellison and Morrison’s depictions of incest. Both authors reveal that paternal incest is a microcosm of power dynamics. However, Morrison gives a voice to underrepresented poor, black girls with Pecola. Pecola also makes incest concrete, where it had previously been only hypothetical. Grogan’s work expands on some of Doane and Hodges’s ideas, as it elaborates both on Pecola’s voice and on the concretization of incest narratives.
Koopman, Emy. “Incestuous Rape, Abjection, and the Colonization of Psychic Space in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 49, no. 3, July 2013, 303–315. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2013394547&site=ehost-liVe.
Koopman questions that colonialism narratives can be perfectly mapped onto rape narratives. She also challenges connections drawn between rape and abjection, or “being cast aside.” She identifies the “colonization of psychic space” as it is present in The Bluest Eye, with Pecola internalizing colonial notions of inferiority and superiority. Koopman’s work pushes back on Doane and Hodges’s linkage of rape and paternalism.
Zender, Karl F. “Faulkner and the Politics of Incest.” American Literature, vol. 70, no. 4, 1998, 739–765. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2902390.
Zender examines Faulkner’s depiction of incest, finding it to be religious and oedipal. He notes that depictions of incest have been similar not only in Faulkner’s work but also in the work of other authors, suggesting that incest narratives have subscribed to a set of motifs. Zender’s work is valuable to my research because it echoes Baker’s references to Freud and explains how episodes of incest fulfill the Oedipus complex, a lens which could also be used to analyze Morrison and Ellison.
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