In this thesis there are six chapters。 The first part gives a brief introduction to Toni Morrison and the second part is the literature review that briefly tells what people have studied on this novel。 The third part is a brief introduction to the author and the novel, and makes an explanation to the infanticide。 The fourth part analyzes the way Toni Morrison inherit the traditional infanticide and focuses on her unique writing techniques and the love of black mother。 The fifth part is the main part of the whole paper; it is about the reconstruction of the traditional infanticide story。 And it is analyzed from three perspectives: the first perspective is the construction of the infanticide; the second perspective explores the deconstruction of the novel; the third perspective focuses on Toni Morrison’s reconstruction of the infanticide。 The last part is the conclusion。

2。 Literature Review

Beloved is a novel with rich ideologies and themes。 Some scholars analyzed the theme of love and ego; some researched the Black’s moral and psychological problems; some probe into the religious issue, the black’s subjectivity, identity construction, music and memories and so on。 Beloved’s multiple themes reflect its charm。 

There are many commentators discussing the damage that slavery and racial discrimination had worked on Afro-American physically and psychologically from the historical and social psychological perspective to reveal the writer’s political sensitivity in writing。 Hu Quansheng pointed out that “Slavery is the creator of darkness,” “when the American Civil War was over, the awareness of slavery still destroyed the Black’s spirit, and affected their thoughts and cognition。”(12) He thought the characters in Beloved have been trapped with “a collective unconsciousness or racial memory”。 (8) 

The novel’s multiple themes also drive scholars’ researches in many different fields。 Infanticide motif is a significant theme in Beloved; it is also the core story through the whole book。 Infanticide is one of the most important motifs in the western literature。 Many commentators have eyes only for the historical and cultural connotations and aesthetic value of art inside the infanticide complex。 Studies on infanticide motif can be grouped into the following perspectives。 First one is to analyze the ideologies, figures or love of mothers。 The second one is to explore the characters in the novel to discover the trauma of black people and the way to recover from the trauma。 Xiao yun said that Morrison deals with the infanticide story from the perspective of postmodernism, and takes infanticide as both the revolt against the white people and expression of deep love of slaves。 The killed daughter’s soul is not only the embodiment of the sixty millions dead ghost, but also the suffering history of all black people (5)。  Dong Junfeng pointed out that the novel uses symbolism skill to express the grievance and indignation of 60,000,000 black people that died an unnatural death in the slave trade。 The memory of Sethe’s infanticide is the memory of the Black’s sufferings (8)。 The third one is to compare Beloved to other novels of infanticide。 Ying Weiwei analyzed the intertextuality between Beloved and Medea。 “The true infanticide is not the patriarchal society of ancient Greece or the slavery of south America, but the growing female subject consciousness of two tragic females”(9)。 However, in the sphere of how Morrison utilized the writing techniques, there is limited research。 So far, only Wu Xiufang has made a study on the inheritance and reconstruction of Beloved’s Infanticide。 文献综述

Therefore, this thesis aims to make a deep analysis on Morrison’ s infanticide story in Beloved in a new way of analyzing how Morrison inherit the tradition and make a comparison with the traditions。 On this basis, this thesis makes an interpretation to the infanticide matrix, figuring out how Morrison reconstructs the novel with her special writing style of postmodernism and Latin-American Magic Realism。