African Literatures and Beyond

African Literatures and Beyond PDF Author: Bernth Lindfors
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401209898
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
This tribute collection reflects the wide range and diversity of James Gibbs’s academic interests. The focus is on Africa, but comparative studies of other literatures also receive attention. Fiction, drama, and poetry by writers from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ireland, England, Germany, India, and the Caribbean are surveyed alongside significant missionaries, scientists, performers, and scholars. The writers discussed include Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Kobina Sekyi, Raphael Armattoe, J.E. Casely Hayford, Michael Dei-Anang, Kofi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Armah, John Kolosa Kargbo, Dele Charley, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, Jonathan Sajiwandani, Samuel E. Krune Mqhayi, A.S. Mopeli–Paulus, Kelwyn Sole, Anna Seghers, Raja Rao, and Arundhati Roy. Other essays treat the black presence in Ireland, anonymous rap artists in Chicago, the Jamaican missionary Joseph Jackson Fuller in the Cameroons, the African-American actor Ira Aldridge in Sweden, the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman in South Africa, and the literary scholar and editor Eldred Durosimi Jones in Sierra Leone. Interviews with the Afro-German Africanist Theodor Wonja Michael and the Irish-Nigerian dramatist Gabriel Gbadamosi are also included. Also offered are poems by Jack Mapanje and Kofi Anyidoho, short stories by Charles R. Larson and Robert Fraser, plays by Femi Osofisan and Martin Banham, and an account of a dramatic reading of a script written and co-performed by James Gibbs. Contributors: Anne Adams, Sola Adeyemi, Kofi Anyidoho, Awo Mana Asiedu, Martin Banham, Eckhard Breitinger, Gordon Collier, James Currey, Geoffrey V. Davis, Chris Dunton, Robert Fraser, Raoul J. Granqvist, Gareth Griffiths, C.L. Innes, Charles R. Larson, Bernth Lindfors, Leif Lorentzon, Jack Mapanje, Christine Matzke, Mpalive–Hangson Msiska, Femi Osofisan, Eustace Palmer, Jane Plastow, Lynn Taylor, and Pia Thielmann. Geoffrey V. Davis co-edits the series Cross/Cultures and the African studies journal Matatu. Recent publications include Narrating Nomadism and African Literatures: Post¬colonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources (both co-ed. 2013). Bernth Lindfors, founding editor of the journal Research in African Literatures, is writing a bio¬graphy of Ira Aldridge (two volumes have so far appeared: The Early Years, 1807–1833 and The Vagabond Years, 1833–1852, both 2011).

African Literatures and Beyond

African Literatures and Beyond PDF Author: Bernth Lindfors
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9401209898
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427

Get Book Here

Book Description
This tribute collection reflects the wide range and diversity of James Gibbs’s academic interests. The focus is on Africa, but comparative studies of other literatures also receive attention. Fiction, drama, and poetry by writers from Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Ireland, England, Germany, India, and the Caribbean are surveyed alongside significant missionaries, scientists, performers, and scholars. The writers discussed include Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Kobina Sekyi, Raphael Armattoe, J.E. Casely Hayford, Michael Dei-Anang, Kofi Awoonor, Ayi Kwei Armah, John Kolosa Kargbo, Dele Charley, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Okot p’Bitek, Jonathan Sajiwandani, Samuel E. Krune Mqhayi, A.S. Mopeli–Paulus, Kelwyn Sole, Anna Seghers, Raja Rao, and Arundhati Roy. Other essays treat the black presence in Ireland, anonymous rap artists in Chicago, the Jamaican missionary Joseph Jackson Fuller in the Cameroons, the African-American actor Ira Aldridge in Sweden, the Swedish naturalist Anders Sparrman in South Africa, and the literary scholar and editor Eldred Durosimi Jones in Sierra Leone. Interviews with the Afro-German Africanist Theodor Wonja Michael and the Irish-Nigerian dramatist Gabriel Gbadamosi are also included. Also offered are poems by Jack Mapanje and Kofi Anyidoho, short stories by Charles R. Larson and Robert Fraser, plays by Femi Osofisan and Martin Banham, and an account of a dramatic reading of a script written and co-performed by James Gibbs. Contributors: Anne Adams, Sola Adeyemi, Kofi Anyidoho, Awo Mana Asiedu, Martin Banham, Eckhard Breitinger, Gordon Collier, James Currey, Geoffrey V. Davis, Chris Dunton, Robert Fraser, Raoul J. Granqvist, Gareth Griffiths, C.L. Innes, Charles R. Larson, Bernth Lindfors, Leif Lorentzon, Jack Mapanje, Christine Matzke, Mpalive–Hangson Msiska, Femi Osofisan, Eustace Palmer, Jane Plastow, Lynn Taylor, and Pia Thielmann. Geoffrey V. Davis co-edits the series Cross/Cultures and the African studies journal Matatu. Recent publications include Narrating Nomadism and African Literatures: Post¬colonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources (both co-ed. 2013). Bernth Lindfors, founding editor of the journal Research in African Literatures, is writing a bio¬graphy of Ira Aldridge (two volumes have so far appeared: The Early Years, 1807–1833 and The Vagabond Years, 1833–1852, both 2011).

African Literature in the Digital Age

African Literature in the Digital Age PDF Author: Shola Adenekan
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
ISBN: 1847012388
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The first book-length study on the relationship between African literature and new media.

Beyond the Boundaries

Beyond the Boundaries PDF Author: Mineke Schipper
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
ISBN: 9780929587363
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A fresh, innovative, and powerful case for African literature on its own terms. "Erudite, well executed, and politically committed....A magnificent and masterful critical reading."--V. Y. Mudimbe, Duke University.

Beyond Aesthetics

Beyond Aesthetics PDF Author: Wole Soyinka
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300247621
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
An intimate reflection on culture and tradition, creativity and power, that draws on a lifetime’s commitment to aesthetic encounter The playwright, poet, essayist, novelist, and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is also a longtime art collector. This book of essays offers a glimpse into the motivations of the collector, as well as a highly personal look at the politics of aesthetics and collecting. Detailing moments of first encounter with objects that drew him in and continue to affect him, Soyinka describes a world of mortals, muses, and deities that imbue the artworks with history and meaning. Beyond Aesthetics is a passionate discussion of the role of identity, tradition, and originality in making, collecting, and exhibiting African art today. Soyinka considers objects that have stirred controversy, and he decries dogmatic efforts—whether colonial or religious—to suppress Africa’s artistic traditions. By turns poetic, provocative, and humorous, Soyinka affirms the power of collecting to reclaim tradition. He urges African artists, filmmakers, collectors, and curators to engage with their aesthetic and cultural histories.

Proverbs, Textuality, and Nativism in African Literature

Proverbs, Textuality, and Nativism in African Literature PDF Author: Adeleke Adeeko
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813015620
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 154

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Book Description
"Provocative, original, and consistently engaging. . . . It deals with the most significant issues in African literary studies today, issues of language, ideology, and identity that are relevant around the world."--Christopher L. Miller, Yale University In one of the first studies to connect anglophone literary criticism with African localist tendencies of nativism, Ad��k� argues that nativism is a highly productive and intensely generative category in the formation of African literature and criticism. He shows the complexities of nativism (the call for authenticity and identity) both in writing and criticism and proposes that virtually all influential African criticism and writing can be discussed under any combination of three varieties of nativism: classical, structuralist, and linguistic. In the process of arguing that the nativist temperament is not alien to contemporary literary theory and that the theories do not negate the motivating spirit of nativism, Ad��k� offers a self-reflexive reading of representative oral and written, national and ethnic African literatures. He suggests a deconstructive reading of Yoruba meta-proverbs and connects the critical arts of such well-known writers as Chinua Achebe (Arrow of God), Ayi Kwei Armah (Thousand Seasons), and Ngugi wa Thiongo (Devil on the Cross) to those of other national and ethnic writers like Femi Osofisan (Kolera Kolej) and Oladejo Okediji (Rere Run). Ad�l�ke Ad��k� is assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His work has appeared in Ariel, Imprimatur, and Pretexts.

Voices of Justice and Reason

Voices of Justice and Reason PDF Author: Geoffrey V. Davis
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042008267
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Over the past fifty years transformations of great moment have taken place in South Africa. Apartheid and the subsequent transition to a democratic, non-racial society in particular have exercised a profound effect on the practice of literature. This study traces the development of literature under apartheid, then seeks to identify the ways in which writers and theatre practitioners are now facing the challenges of a new social order. The main focus is on the work of black writers, prime among them Matsemela Manaka, Mtutuzeli Matshoba and Richard Rive, who, as politically committed members of the oppressed majority, bore witness to the "black experience" through their writing. Despite the draconian censorship system they were able to address the social problems caused by racial discrimination in all areas of life, particularly through forced removals, the migrant labour system, and the creation of the homelands. Their writing may be read both as a comprehensive record of everyday life under apartheid and as an alternative cultural history of South Africa. Particular attention is paid to theatre as a barometer of social change in South Africa. The concluding chapters consider how in the current period of transition writers and arts institutions have set about reassessing their priorities, redefining their function and seeking new aesthetic directions in taking up the challenge of imagining a new society.

Africa Writes Back to Self

Africa Writes Back to Self PDF Author: Evan M. Mwangi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438426976
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.

African American Literature Beyond Race

African American Literature Beyond Race PDF Author: Gene Andrew Jarrett
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814742882
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 458

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Book Description
An anthology of 16 stories and excerpts from novels by African American writers includes critical essays on each author by a variety of scholars.

Apartheid and Beyond

Apartheid and Beyond PDF Author: Rita Barnard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199791163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Apartheid and Beyond explores a wide range of South African writings to demonstrate the way apartheid functioned in its day-to-day operations as a geographical system of control, exerting its power through such spatial mechanisms as residential segregation, bantustans, passes, and prisons.

Beyond Gold and Diamonds

Beyond Gold and Diamonds PDF Author: Melissa Free
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 1438481543
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Beyond Gold and Diamonds demonstrates the importance of southern Africa to British literature from the 1880s to the 1920s, from the rise of the systematic exploitation of the region's mineral wealth to the aftermath of World War I. It focuses on fiction by the colonial-born Olive Schreiner, southern Africa's first literary celebrity, as well as by H. Rider Haggard, Gertrude Page, and John Buchan, its most influential authorial informants, British authors who spent significant time in the region and wrote about it as insiders. Tracing the ways in which generic innovation enabled these writers to negotiate cultural and political concerns through a uniquely British South African lens, Melissa Free argues that British South African literature constitutes a distinct field, one that overlaps with but also exists apart from both a national South African literary tradition and a tradition of South African literature in English. The various genres that British South African novelists introduced—the New Woman novel, the female colonial romance, the Rhodesian settler romance, and the modern spy thriller—anticipated metropolitan literary developments while consolidating Britain's sense of its own dominion in a time of increasing opposition.