African Literature and the Crisis of Post-structuralist Theorising

African Literature and the Crisis of Post-structuralist Theorising PDF Author: Niyi Osundare
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789783202313
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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African Literature and the Crisis of Post-structuralist Theorising

African Literature and the Crisis of Post-structuralist Theorising PDF Author: Niyi Osundare
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789783202313
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 23

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Book Description


Structural Models and African Poetics

Structural Models and African Poetics PDF Author: Sunday O. Anozie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134860463
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
In this pioneering work, first published in 1981, Sunday O. Anozie examines the relevance of structuralism and semiology to literary criticism in general and to African poetics in particular. Behind the growing body of African literature lies an immense reservoir of oral tradition for which the proper tools of analysis and interpretation have yet to be found. This book represents the first comprehensive full-scale exposition, analysis and critique of structuralism by a non-Western and non-European scholar. From an African viewpoint, it examines the roles to be played by structuralism and post-structuralism in the development of the general principles governing poetics and literary creativity in Africa. This title will be of interest to students of literature and literary theory.

A Structuralist Discourse on African Literature

A Structuralist Discourse on African Literature PDF Author: Frank Uche Mowah
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 56

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Counter Discourse in African Literature

Counter Discourse in African Literature PDF Author: Ce, Chin
Publisher: Handel Books
ISBN: 9783708562
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
This volume charts the widening frontiers of black literary aesthetics using the prose and dramatic fictions of writers from Africa and the African diaspora. The chapters come in two interactive phases of current critical discourses involving rejoinders from past-present concerns and issues of cultural and contemporary modernity. These studies stress the argument that African literature is hardly discussed outside contemporary history and that the reason for the apparent disconnection among groups in Africa and the diaspora can be traced to the disparate elements within the continent and diaspora.

Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature

Routledge Handbook of Minority Discourses in African Literature PDF Author: Tanure Ojaide
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000053059
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
This handbook provides a critical overview of literature dealing with groups of people or regions that suffer marginalization within Africa. The contributors examine a multiplicity of minority discourses expressed in African literature, including those who are culturally, socially, politically, religiously, economically, and sexually marginalized in literary and artistic creations. Chapters and sections of the book are structured to identify major areas of minority articulation of their condition and strategies deployed against the repression, persecution, oppression, suppression, domination, and tyranny of the majority or dominant group. Bringing together diverse perspectives to give a holistic representation of the African reality, this handbook is an important read for scholars and students of comparative and postcolonial literature and African studies.

Thread in the Loom

Thread in the Loom PDF Author: Niyi Osundare
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
Even in this age of triumphal globalism, Africa still hangs on to a precarious existence in the margin, the zone of abysmal silence and disarticulation, stripped of agency and talk-back capability. It remains largely invisible on the map of the global village drawn by those who control the paper as well as the pencil. In an age of "travelling theories" and "travelling texts," externally generated ideas and prejudices travel with imperial ease and confidence in Africa while the "canon war" makes it extremely difficult for African texts to make it to the reading lists of European and American institutions. Related problems such as a grossly maladjusted economy with the myriad socio-economic injustices spawned by it, political instability, dictatorship, and intolerance have affected the literary and cultural scene in near apocalyptic proportions. This selection of essays addresses these and other issues from the author's perspective as an African writer, academic, social critic, and regular contributor to media discourse. Book jacket.

Theory of African Literature

Theory of African Literature PDF Author: Chidi Amuta
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1786990032
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
This groundbreaking work, first published in 1989, was one of the first to challenge the conventional critical assessment of African literature, and remains highly influential today. Amuta's key argument is that African literature can be discussed only within the wider framework of the dismantling of colonial rule and Western hegemony in Africa. In exploring the possibility of a dialectical, alternative critical base, he draws upon both classical Marxist aesthetics and the theories of African culture espoused by Fanon, Cabral and Ngugi. From these explorations, Amuta derives a new language of criticism, which is then applied to works by modern African writers as diverse as Achebe, Ousmane, Agostinho Neto and Dennis Brutus. Amuta's highly original and innovative approach remains relevant not only for assessing the literature of developing countries, but for Marxist and postcolonial theories of literary criticism more generally. The author's elegance of argument and clarity of exposition makes this a distinguished and lasting contribution to debates around cultural expression in postcolonial Africa.

Issues in African Literature

Issues in African Literature PDF Author: Charles E. Nnolim
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9788422365
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The multitudinous nature of African literature has always been an issue but really not a problem, although its oral base has been used by expatriate critics to accuse African literature of thin plots, superficial characterisation, and narrative structures. African literature also, it is observed, is a mixed grill: it is oral; it is written in vernacular or tribal tongues; written in foreign tongues English, French, Portuguese and within the foreign language in which it is written, pidgin and creole further bend the already bent language giving African literature a further taint of linguistic impurity. African literature further suffers from the nature of its "newness" and this created problems for the critic. Because it is new, and because its critics are in simultaneous existence with its writers, we confront the problem of "instant analysis". Issues in African Literature continues the debate and tries to clarify contemporary burning issues in African literature, by focussing on particular areas where the debate has been most concerned or around which it has hovered and been persistent.

Academic Discourses on African Postcolonial Literature in the Past 20 Years

Academic Discourses on African Postcolonial Literature in the Past 20 Years PDF Author: Anna Poppen
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3656718776
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 25

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Book Description
Project Report from the year 2012 in the subject Literature - Africa, grade: 1,0, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, language: English, abstract: The academic discourse on African postcolonial literature is characterized by a continuous process of debates on a variety of issues, reassessments of theories and redefinitions of terms. The term African postcolonial literature refers to writings produced after the political independence of various African states which were formerly subject to European colonial rule. Most of this literature written by African authors in their home countries or in diaspora deals with issues of colonial experience or decolonization. However, as Graham Huggan points out, the term African literature is a problematic concept, because “it conveys a fiction of homogeneity” and ignores the cultural variety existing on the African continent. Gikandi explains that the foundations of modern African literature have been laid by the process of colonization, e.g through education in Christian schools which have enabled today’s forms of literature. Gikandi emphasizes the irony of this fact: “[W]hile the majority of African writers were the products of colonial institutions, they turned to writing to oppose colonialism.” This leads to various problems when dealing with African writings, especially when applying the viewpoint of postcolonial criticism, which has been trying to theorize African writings since the 1980s. As Huggan points out, postcolonial criticism has been criticized “as subscribing to the very binaries (e.g. ‘Europe and its Others’) it seeks to resist.” This paper contains an annotated bibliography which considers various issues regarding African postcolonial literature that have been discussed in the past 20 years. Here, the term African postcolonial literature is understood in a temporal way (referring to the postcolonial era in Africa) and in an academic way (referring to the postcolonial discourse). The articles, collections of essays and monographs listed in the bibliography only provide glimpses at the extensive and elaborate discourses on African postcolonial writings. However, the entries in the bibliography have been categorized in order to cast a light on the main issues and problems discussed in this field. In the following, introductory works and texts dealing with the two main genres of African literature will be presented first. Works referring to postcolonial theory and consequential problems and debates (e.g. on language) take the major part of the bibliography.

Mapping Intersections

Mapping Intersections PDF Author: African Literature Association. Meeting
Publisher: Africa World Press
ISBN: 9780865436343
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This book takes on the challenge: What roles can and should African literature play in Africa's development? From a variety of critical stances and perspectives, the concepts of "literature" and of "development" are theorized, to include and extend beyond inherited concepts and boundaries in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, and thus, to engage peoples' everyday life experiences. Approaches to the question of Africa's literature and its development range from African feminism or feminist practices, to the economics and politics of public access to knowledge, information and literature, to communication networks and use of African languages in national education policies. Twenty essays constitute the volume's four parts which focus on: -- Diverse conceptualizations of African literature and development -- Critical studies of specific writers' works, linking their artistic development with issues and events of social or political development -- A philosophical consideration of the development's relationship to literature -- Models of activist pedagogy in African literature The structure of this volume is encompassed by two roundtable transcriptions with writers and critics for whom African literature and Africa's development is part of a larger struggle to create new space in which to thrive and envision new life, inside and outside the academy.