Tessa Roynon is a Research Fellow at St Peter's College, Oxford. Her research and publications to date have centred on the reception of the classical tradition in American and black diasporic literature, and on Toni Morrison's engagement with early modern English culture. Her publications include African Athena: New Agendas (OUP, 2011), co-edited with Daniel Orrells and Gurminder K. Bhambra. She serves on the advisory board of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition.

Every paragraph of this work contributes some insight that slows the reader down and causes one to ponder and rethink Morrison. I have taught some of Morrison's books for thirty years, but Roynon has made me want to start again and reread them from the beginning ... Her meaty and penetrating analysis demonstrates Morrison's "ambivalent engagement" in rewriting, even inverting, conventional American history.

• PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; CONCLUSION: SPLITTING OPEN THE WORLD; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX

Tessa Roynon is a Research Fellow at St Peter's College, Oxford. Her research and publications to date have centred on the reception of the classical tradition in American and black diasporic literature, and on Toni Morrison's engagement with early modern English culture. Her publications include African Athena: New Agendas (OUP, 2011), co-edited with Daniel Orrells and Gurminder K. Bhambra. She serves on the advisory board of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition.

Every paragraph of this work contributes some insight that slows the reader down and causes one to ponder and rethink Morrison. I have taught some of Morrison's books for thirty years, but Roynon has made me want to start again and reread them from the beginning ... Her meaty and penetrating analysis demonstrates Morrison's "ambivalent engagement" in rewriting, even inverting, conventional American history.

• PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; CONCLUSION: SPLITTING OPEN THE WORLD; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX

Tessa Roynon is a Research Fellow at St Peter's College, Oxford. Her research and publications to date have centred on the reception of the classical tradition in American and black diasporic literature, and on Toni Morrison's engagement with early modern English culture. Her publications include African Athena: New Agendas (OUP, 2011), co-edited with Daniel Orrells and Gurminder K. Bhambra. She serves on the advisory board of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition.

Every paragraph of this work contributes some insight that slows the reader down and causes one to ponder and rethink Morrison. I have taught some of Morrison's books for thirty years, but Roynon has made me want to start again and reread them from the beginning ... Her meaty and penetrating analysis demonstrates Morrison's "ambivalent engagement" in rewriting, even inverting, conventional American history.

• PREFACE; INTRODUCTION; CONCLUSION: SPLITTING OPEN THE WORLD; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX