Language as Codification: Contextualizing the Improvisational Dimensions of Toni Morrison’s Jazz

Abstract

The relationsphip between language and literature is an intruistic component of literary analyses. Both are inextricably linked. Whereas literature takes its foundation from language, language in turn, is enriched by literature. In fact, literature expands the possibilities oflanguage. This intricate link is what has given rise to the application of formand content in the explication of literary works. Toni Morrison’s Jazz is being examined here in the context of the foregoing and related devices. The novel is a study in the juxtaposition of form and content inliterary appreciation. In it, the Jazz age of the 1920s in America when blacks sought to liberate themselves from the codes and stereotypes of slavery is brought to life by the author. She deploys the symbolism of jazz music both as form and content. Using jazz as an improvisational device, she weaves powerful fables around the experience of the black personality in a slave era. The conflict between America’s ideology of freedom and mechanism of oppression comes alive in the personality of the protagonist. The author resolves this conflict through the medium of jazz music which at once uplifts, liberates and endures. By so doing, the author does not just reconstruct and re-appropriate the ugly past of blacks in America, she imbues her language with its own code.