Contemporary African Literature

Contemporary African Literature PDF Author: Tanure Ojaide
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611630299
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Contemporary African Literature: New Approaches comprises essays that go beyond conventional literary studies to open new vistas for critical excursion. It deals not only with purely literary issues of canonization, language, aesthetics, and scholar-poet traditions that have barely been addressed directly in recent studies but also with diverse interdisciplinary topics in literature as of migration, globalization, environmental and human rights, and gender. Written from his scholar-poet position, Tanure Ojaide's essays address pertinent issues that need to be either examined or reexamined in the current condition of Africa in the age of globalization and democratization. The collection of essays also brings literature to bear on issues that have become new concerns for writers and the general African populace. It widens the scope of the African experience in literature as never before. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "This book is a worthy read, and its panoramic view will leave any reader familiar with African literature, especially in the areas of poetry and fiction, with ample cause to appreciate Tanure Ojaide's literary foresight and the merits of his scholarship." -- World Literature Today

Contemporary African Literature

Contemporary African Literature PDF Author: Tanure Ojaide
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781611630299
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Contemporary African Literature: New Approaches comprises essays that go beyond conventional literary studies to open new vistas for critical excursion. It deals not only with purely literary issues of canonization, language, aesthetics, and scholar-poet traditions that have barely been addressed directly in recent studies but also with diverse interdisciplinary topics in literature as of migration, globalization, environmental and human rights, and gender. Written from his scholar-poet position, Tanure Ojaide's essays address pertinent issues that need to be either examined or reexamined in the current condition of Africa in the age of globalization and democratization. The collection of essays also brings literature to bear on issues that have become new concerns for writers and the general African populace. It widens the scope of the African experience in literature as never before. This book is part of the African World Series, edited by Toyin Falola, Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities, University of Texas at Austin. "This book is a worthy read, and its panoramic view will leave any reader familiar with African literature, especially in the areas of poetry and fiction, with ample cause to appreciate Tanure Ojaide's literary foresight and the merits of his scholarship." -- World Literature Today

Routledge Handbook of African Literature

Routledge Handbook of African Literature PDF Author: Moradewun Adejunmobi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351859374
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 543

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Book Description
The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal interface alongside more familiar discussions of postcolonial politics. Every chapter is an original research essay written by a broad spectrum of scholars with expertise in the subject, providing an application of the most recent insights into analysis of particular topics or application of particular critical frameworks to one or more African literary works. The handbook will be a valuable interdisciplinary resource for scholars and students of African literature, African culture, postcolonial literature and literary analysis. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Approaches to the African Novel

Approaches to the African Novel PDF Author: Charles E. Nnolim
Publisher: African Books Collective
ISBN: 9788422195
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
This Third Edition of Approaches to the African Novel is a child of necessity. Because of the unfortunate death of the publisher of Saros International who issued the First Edition and high demand this third, enlarged edition has become imperative. Three new essays (all previously published) are added, two expectedly on Achebe (the father of the African novel) and one on Mongp Betiís Mission to Kala which was partially anthologised in Contemporary Literary Criticism (Volume 27, 1984). Achebeís Things Fall Apart as an Igbo national epic has evoked a spate of reactions from critics of African literature especially the troika Chinweizu et al. in Toward the Decolonization of African Literature. It was also anthologised in Modern Black Literature edited by S. Okechukwu Menu (1971). The essay on Arrow of God whose structure and meaning has been largely avoided by other critics is included here for further airing. For gender balance, as the previous volume contained no essays on women writers, an essay on Flora Nwapa has been added. Since the novels discussed in this volume exclusively are on the African literature south of the Sahara, the last essay on Peter Abrahams comes in to round out this collection of essays with a study of a south African writer, for geographical balance.

African Literature

African Literature PDF Author: C. F. Swanepoel
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African literature
Languages : en
Pages : 104

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Book Description


Remapping African Literature

Remapping African Literature PDF Author: Olabode Ibironke
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319692968
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
This book is an exploration of the material conditions of the production of African literature. Drawing on the archives of Heinemann’s African Writers Series, it highlights the procedures, relationships, demands, ideologies, and counterpressures engendered by the publication of three major authors: Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Ngugi wa Thiongo. As a study of the history and techniques of African literary texts, this book advances a theory of reciprocity of effects - what it terms 'auto-heteronomy' - to describe the dynamic of formalist activism by which texts anticipate and shape the forces of literary production in advance. It serves as a departure from the 'death of the author' thesis by reconsidering the role of the author in African literature and culture industry, as well as the influence of African publics on writers’ aesthetic choices, and on the overall processes of production. This work is a major contribution to African literary history, literary criticism, and book history.

Comparative Approaches to African Literatures

Comparative Approaches to African Literatures PDF Author: Bernth Lindfors
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004483721
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Some of the essays in this book - notably those concerned with examining Western influences on sub-Saharan African writings (tracing Shakespearean and Brechtian echoes in Nigerian drama, for instance, or following the footprints of Sherlock Holmes in Swahili detective fiction) - fit the traditional definition of comparative literature. These are essays that cross national literary boundaries and sometimes transcend language barriers as well. They look for correspondences in related literary phenomena from widely dispersed areas of the globe, bringing together what is akin from what is akimbo. But most of the essays included here involve closer comparisons. Two focus on works produced in different languages within the same African nation (Yoruba and English in Nigeria, Afrikaans and English in South Africa), and one presents a taxonomy of dominant literary forms in English in three East African nations. Others concentrate on the oeuvre of a single author, and on the likely future output of exiled writers who soon will be returning home. One essay contrasts discursive tendencies within the same text, and another investigates conflicting African and Western religious beliefs. A great variety of comparative methodologies is deployed here; not all of these are transnational, multilingual or pluralistic in scope. The last two groups of essays deal with matters of characterization and authorial reputation. Studies of the depiction of African Americans, politicians and women in a wide range of African literary texts are followed by an assessment of the current standing of anglophone Africa's leading authors. In entering such highly contested terrain, the comparatist approach adopted has been that of the neutral witness to early African attempts - comparatist in their own way - to define an African canon of classic texts. Authors discussed include: Ama Ata Aidoo (Ghana); Chinua Achebe, John Pepper Clark, Cyprian Ekwensi, D.O. Fagunwa, Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola (Nigeria); Peter Abrahams, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Alex La Guma, Thomas Mofolo, Es'kia Mphahlele and Karel Schoeman (South Africa).

Gender in African Women's Writing

Gender in African Women's Writing PDF Author: Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253211491
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
"This is a cogent analysis of the complexities of gender in the work of nine contemporary Anglophone and Francophone novelists. . . . offers illuminating interpretations of worthy writers . . . " —Multicultural Review "This book reaffirms Bessie Head's remark that books are a tool, in this case a tool that allows readers to understand better the rich lives and the condition of African women. Excellent notes and a rich bibliography." —Choice ". . . a college-level analysis which will appeal to any interested in African studies and literature." —The Bookwatch This book applies gender as a category of analysis to the works of nine sub-Saharan women writers: Aidoo, Bá, Beyala, Dangarembga, Emecheta, Head, Liking, Tlali, and Zanga Tsogo. The author appropriates western feminist theories of gender in an African literary context, and in the process, she finds and names critical theory that is African, indigenous, self-determining, which she then melds with western feminist theory and comes out with an over-arching theory that enriches western, post-colonial and African critical perspectives.

Teaching the African Novel

Teaching the African Novel PDF Author: Gaurav Desai
Publisher: Modern Language Association of America
ISBN: 9781603290371
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
What is the African novel, and how should it be taught? The twenty-three essays of this volume address these two questions and in the process convey a wealth of information and ideas about the diverse regions, peoples, nations, languages, and writers of the African continent. Topics include Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's favoring of indigenous languages and literary traditions over European; the special place of Marxism in African letters;the influence of Frantz Fanon; women writers and the sub-Saharan novel;the Maghrebian novel;the novel and the griot epic in the Sahel;Islam in the West African novel;novels in Spanish from Equatorial Guinea;apartheid and postapartheid fiction;African writers in the diaspora;globalization in East African fiction; teaching Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart to students in different countries;the Onitsha market romance. The volume editor, Gaurav Desai, writes, "The point of the volume is to encourage a reading of Africa that is sensitive to its history of colonization but at the same time responsive to its present multiracial and multicultural condition."

Representing Africa in Children's Literature

Representing Africa in Children's Literature PDF Author: Vivian Yenika-Agbaw
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135923671
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Representing Africa in Children’s Literature explores how African and Western authors portray youth in contemporary African societies, critically examining the dominant images of Africa and Africans in books published between 1960 and 2005. The book focuses on contemporary children’s and young adult literature set in Africa, examining issues regarding colonialism, the politics of representation, and the challenges posed to both "insiders" and "outsiders" writing about Africa for children.

Theory of African Literature

Theory of African Literature PDF Author: Chidi Amuta
Publisher: Zed Books
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
A classic work that overturns conventional assessments of African literature, offering a unique contribution to literary criticism.