A Definition of African Tragedy

A Definition of African Tragedy PDF Author: Samuel Amanor Dseagu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African drama
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description

A Definition of African Tragedy

A Definition of African Tragedy PDF Author: Samuel Amanor Dseagu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African drama
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description


A Definition of Tragedy

A Definition of Tragedy PDF Author: Oscar Mandel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy

Wole Soyinka and Modern Tragedy PDF Author: Ketu Katrak
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0313240744
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The tragic drama of Nigeria's leading playwright, Wole Soyinka, is the focus of this in-depth study. Ketu H. Katrak explores Soyinka's concept of the tragic experience as it relates to Yoruba culture and analyzes the unique features of his theory of tragedy which blends Yoruba traditional drama with Western tragic forms. Opening with a biographical overview of Soyinka's life and career, Katrak addresses the major issues presented by Soyinka in his essay on tragedy, The Fourth Stage. These include the origin of tragic feeling, the components of the tragic experience, and the concretization of these abstract notions in the Yoruba god Ogun. The author demonstrates that it is through these themes and the elements of ritual and myth that Soyinka imparts communal values to his work, ultimately achieving a metaphysical level of expression. Katrak also discusses the element of the death of the protagonist in a number of Soyinka's plays and how it is beneficial for the community. The history of a community, a nation, and mankind, as it appears in other Soyinka plays, is also discussed. Throughout the work, the study of Soyinka's drama is balanced with an analysis of dramatic structure and stagecraft. Included are interviews and discussions with many of Nigeria's academicians, as well as with Soyinka himself.

The Nature of Tragedy in Modern African Drama

The Nature of Tragedy in Modern African Drama PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Tragic Mercies and Other Journeys to Redemption

Tragic Mercies and Other Journeys to Redemption PDF Author: Ashley Nicole Burge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
Tragic Mercies and Other Journeys to Redemption: Defining the Morrisonian Tragedy problematizes current portrayals of tragedy and tragic acts in African American literature. Using Toni Morrison's Beloved as a foundational text, I argue that Morrison executes a literary aesthetic that disrupts traditional constructs of the tragedy that elevate Eurocentric ideologies at the expense of Black identity and subjectivity. This aesthetic challenges the portrayal of the "tragic figure," positioning it as an inadequate trope that nullifies the complexities associated with the lived reality of Africans/African Americans under repressive systems such as American slavery. Morrison reconfigures tragedy to illuminate a space that she calls the "tragic mode" in which her characters achieve a form of catharsis and revelation. I use Morrison's signification of tragedy to build a theoretical paradigm that I call the Tragic Mercy which interprets tragedy and tragic acts, such as infanticide in her neo-slave narrative Beloved (1987), as events that symbolize activism against oppressive systems connected to racist capitalist patriarchal ideologies. The Tragic Mercy is the lens through which I define the Morrisonian tragedy, and I articulate it as an act that generates a physical and psychological journey that leads to redemption, catharsis, and reclamation. I connect this journey to several tenets of African American culture and history, which resist one-dimensional constructs of African American identity and subjectivity. For instance, I use several constructs associated with Black Feminism to demonstrate how the act/action/activism of the Tragic Mercy equips characters with agency under oppressive systems that would normally handicap their resolve. I also configure the journey in ways that parallel other cultural expressions that are ingrained in the African American psyche. For example, I liken certain themes to the reclamation of the vernacular tradition. In each instance, I demonstrate how Morrison's literary aesthetic forces the reader to reassess the signification of tragedy as a means to validate the complexities associated with the African American experience. Further, I use the lens of the Tragic Mercy as a viable construct to interpret other works of African American literature, including Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus (1996) and Fucking A (2001), and Kyle Baker's Nat Turner (2006). Using these themes, I position Morrison's literary aesthetic as a narrative strategy that builds on African American literary and cultural traditions while simultaneously subverting detrimental Eurocentric ideologies

Rethinking Greek Tragedy in African Contexts

Rethinking Greek Tragedy in African Contexts PDF Author: Lloydetta Ursula Quaicoe
Publisher: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada
ISBN: 9780612258815
Category : Greek drama (Tragedy)
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description


The Politics of Adaptation

The Politics of Adaptation PDF Author: Astrid Van Weyenberg
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 940120957X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This book explores contemporary African adaptations of classical Greek tragedies. Six South African and Nigerian dramatic texts – by Yael Farber, Mark Fleishman, Athol Fugard, Femi Osofisan, and Wole Soyinka – are analysed through the thematic lens of resistance, revolution, reconciliation, and mourning. The opening chapters focus on plays that mobilize Greek tragedy to inspire political change, discussing how Sophocles’ heroine Antigone is reconfigured as a freedom fighter and how Euripides’ Dionysos is transformed into a revolutionary leader. The later chapters shift the focus to plays that explore the costs and consequences of political change, examining how the cycle of violence dramatized in Aeschylus’ Oresteia trilogy acquires relevance in post-apartheid South Africa, and how the mourning of Euripides’ Trojan Women resonates in and beyond Nigeria. Throughout, the emphasis is on how playwrights, through adaptation, perform a cultural politics directed at the Europe that has traditionally considered ancient Greece as its property, foundation, and legitimization. Van Weyenberg additionally discusses how contemporary African reworkings of Greek tragedies invite us to reconsider how we think about the genre of tragedy and about the cultural process of adaptation. Against George Steiner’s famous claim that tragedy has died, this book demonstrates that Greek tragedy holds relevance today. But it also reveals that adaptations do more than simply keeping the texts they draw on alive: through adaptation, playwrights open up a space for politics. In this dynamic between adaptation and pre-text, the politics of adaptation is performed.

Myth, Literature and the African World

Myth, Literature and the African World PDF Author: Wole Soyinka
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521398343
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, here analyses the interconnecting worlds of myth, ritual and literature in Africa.

Beyond the 'African Tragedy'

Beyond the 'African Tragedy' PDF Author: Malinda Smith
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780754648246
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Well researched and insightful, this volume examines the historical and contemporary discourse on African development and the continent's place in the global economy. This timely resource is suitable for students and policy makers concerned with developme

A Continent for the Taking

A Continent for the Taking PDF Author: Howard W. French
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307424308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In A Continent for the Taking Howard W. French, a veteran correspondent for The New York Times, gives a compelling firsthand account of some of Africa’s most devastating recent history–from the fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, to Charles Taylor’s arrival in Monrovia, to the genocide in Rwanda and the Congo that left millions dead. Blending eyewitness reportage with rich historical insight, French searches deeply into the causes of today’s events, illuminating the debilitating legacy of colonization and the abiding hypocrisy and inhumanity of both Western and African political leaders. While he captures the tragedies that have repeatedly befallen Africa’s peoples, French also opens our eyes to the immense possibility that lies in Africa’s complexity, diversity, and myriad cultural strengths. The culmination of twenty-five years of passionate exploration and understanding, this is a powerful and ultimately hopeful book about a fascinating and misunderstood continent.