Jazz (1992) is the sixth novel written by Toni Morrison, who is a contemporary African-American female writer and Nobel laureate in literature. This novel takes Harlem, New York, the “Jazz” age as the background, focuses on the murder of the black female middle school student Dorcas as the main focus, and traces the rough experience of Joe and Violet, a black couple in the south, who come to the northern city for seeking a living, get lost and finally find themselves back in the noisy city life. Influenced by the black family culture and on the basis of the intertextual writing, almost all of Morrison’s works revolve around black individuals, between individuals and groups, black culture and black history, etc., spreading the source of the national cultural classics of the black and their beliefs, in which Morrison makes artistic innovation in her deconstruction and effectively deepen their themes. They show the writer’s deep concern for the fate of the black community and the process of constantly exploring a way out for them.There are two main characteristics of intertextuality: one is the intertextuality at the level of discourse, which is mainly a reference to the theme and discourse; the other one is the intertextuality at the cultural level. Morrison fully satisfies the above two characteristics in the creation of Jazz, which shows as a typical intertextual writing. In Jazz, the whole novel is intertextualized internally and externally, not only showing the reader its intertextual writing within the text itself; Outside of the text, in terms of theme and discourse, the text is also intertextual with other different works, all of which convey the concern and exploration for the future destiny of the African-American community.

Cheng Cheng. An Analysis of Jazz from the Perspective of Intertextuality. Frontiers in Art Research (2023) Vol. 5, Issue 15: 94-98. https://doi.org/10.25236/FAR.2023.051515.

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