Author: J. Roger Kurtz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315467518
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This book fills a gap in the field of contemporary trauma studies by interrogating the relevance of trauma for African literatures. Kurtz argues that a thoughtful application of trauma theory in relation to African literatures is in fact a productive exercise, and furthermore that the benefits of this exercise include not only what it can do for African literature, but also what it can do for trauma studies. He makes the case for understanding trauma healing within the larger project of peacebuilding, with an emphasis on the transformative potential of what he terms the African moral imagination as embodied in the creative work of its writers. He offers readings of selected works by Chinua Achebe, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Chimamanda Adichie, and Nuruddin Farah as case studies for how African literature can influence our understanding of trauma and trauma healing. This will be a valuable volume for those with interests in current trends and developments in trauma studies, African literary studies, postcolonial studies, and memory studies.
Author: Tim Woods
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526130793
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
African pasts examines African literatures in English since the end of colonialism, investigating how they represents African history through the twin matrices of memory and trauma. Inextricably tied up with the historical conditions of Africa’s colonisation, charting the emergence of its independence, and scrutinising Africa’s contemporary neo-colonial and postcolonial states as a legacy of the colonial past, African literatures are continually preoccupied with exploring modes of representation to ‘work through’ their different traumatic colonial pasts. Among other issues, this book deals with literature in the era of apartheid, the post-apartheid aftermath, metafictional experiments in African fiction, gender representation in reaction to the trauma of colonialism and ‘imprisonment narratives’. African pasts covers a wide range of African literatures and a cross-section of genres – fiction, poetry, prison-narratives, postcolonial theory – and embraces such well-known writers as Soyinka, Coetzee, Ngugi and Achebe, and more recent writers such as Nuruddin Farah, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Achmat Dangor, Etienne van Heerden, Zakes Mda, Gillian Slovo and Calixthe Beyala.
Author: J. Roger Kurtz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316821277
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 416
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Book Description
As a concept, 'trauma' has attracted a great deal of interest in literary studies. A key term in psychoanalytic approaches to literary study, trauma theory represents a critical approach that enables new modes of reading and of listening. It is a leading concept of our time, applicable to individuals, cultures, and nations. This book traces how trauma theory has come to constitute a discrete but influential approach within literary criticism in recent decades. It offers an overview of the genesis and growth of literary trauma theory, recording the evolution of the concept of trauma in relation to literary studies. In twenty-one essays, covering the origins, development, and applications of trauma in literary studies, Trauma and Literature addresses the relevance and impact this concept has in the field.
Author: Esther Pujolràs-Noguer
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031463455
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
This volume examines a selection of life writing in English by authors from the South West Indian Ocean, namely South Africa, East Africa, Mauritius and Sri Lanka. The two motifs that run through the chapters – mourning and resilience – are theoretical frameworks that have so far not been brought into conversation in this way. The combination of trauma studies and autobiographical analysis sharpens the focus of the discussions on Indian Ocean life writing, privileging an Indian Ocean imaginary that is transnational and cross-oceanic in its orientation and pointing to networks of connections that transcend the nation state, which is often the origin of trauma in the first place. Filling a gap in Indian Ocean studies in its close readings of trauma and resilience, the book also broadens perspectives on postcolonial life writing since little attention has been paid so far to Indian Ocean autobiographical literary products. By the same token, the volume also enriches the field of Indian Ocean literary studies by incorporating life writing as an aesthetic strategy which helps to configure Indian Ocean subjectivities.
Author: Dalene Matthee
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226510832
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
Set in nineteenth-century rural Africa, Fiela's Child tells the gripping story of Fiela Komoetie and a white, three-year old child, Benjamin, whom she finds crying on her doorstep. For nine years Fiela raises Benjamin as one of her own children. But when census takers discover Benjamin, they send him to an illiterate white family of woodcutters who claim him as their son. What follows is Benjamin's search for his identity and the fundamental changes affecting the white and black families who claim him. "Everything a novel can be: convincing, thought-provoking, upsetting, unforgettable, and timeless."—Grace Ingoldby, New Statesman "Fiela's Child is a parade that broadens and humanizes our understanding of the conflicts still affecting South Africa today."—Francis Levy, New York Times Book Review "A powerful creation of time and place with dark threads of destiny and oppression and its roots in the almost Biblical soil of a storyteller's art."—Christopher Wordsworth, The Guardian "The characters in the novel live and breathe; and the landscape is so brightly painted that the trees, birds, elephants, and rivers of old South Africa are characters themselves. A book not to miss."—Kirkus Reviews
Author: Eugenia Ossana
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040313957
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212
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Book Description
Nigerian Authors and the Me-Generation: New Shades of Black explores African literary issues and focuses on Nigerian generations throughout history. It also underscores women authors’ relatively unknown or dispersed role and their positions regarding Western feminism. Concurrently, the book acknowledges the emergence of a current Generation called the Me-Generation, dealing with erstwhile taboo themes and genre experimentation. Three contemporary novels are singled out and analysed: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, A Small Silence by Jumoke Verissimo and Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. They deal with the trope of blackness as humour and satire, as a healing space and as Igbo spiritual cosmovision, which contests Western givens. This book can become a reference for those interested in African literature and, particularly, Nigerian literature. Concurrently, it can be a starting point to enrich the debate on African literature.
Author: Sonya Andermahr
Publisher: MDPI
ISBN: 3038421952
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue "Decolonizing Trauma Studies: Trauma and Postcolonialism" that was published in Humanities
Author: Robert T. Tally Jr.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000208044
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 302
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Book Description
Following the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, Spatial Literary Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Space, Geography, and the Imagination offers a wide range of essays that reframe or transform contemporary criticism by focusing attention, in various ways, on the dynamic relations among space, place, and literature. These essays reflect upon the representation of space and place, whether in the real world, in imaginary universes, or in those hybrid zones where fiction meets reality. Working within or alongside related approaches, such as geocriticism, literary geography, and the spatial humanities, these essays examine the relationship between literary spatiality and different genres or media, such as film or television. The contributors to Spatial Literary Studies draw upon diverse critical and theoretical traditions in disclosing, analyzing, and exploring the significance of space, place, and mapping in literature and in the world, thus making new textual geographies and literary cartographies possible.
Author: Apryl Lewis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666921394
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 159
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Book Description
Black Feminism and Traumatic Legacies in Contemporary African American Literature employs an analysis of select African American novels and applies trauma studies and Black Feminist Studies to explain the significance of trauma and traumatic experiences that stem from slavery and how this advances scholarly discussions about African American literature. Using the crooked room theory from Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen (2011), the author argues that the traumatic legacy of slavery is the “crooked room” that African Americans, especially Black women, are forced to navigate to facilitate healing. Much like trauma, healing is not a linear concept, and healing is more about reclaiming oneself in the aftermath of traumatic experiences. An intersectional approach facilitated by Black Feminist Studies is pivotal for uplifting the traumatic experiences of African Americans, especially women, that does justice to their specific histories. Although slavery is pushed out of public awareness because of people who are uncomfortable with confronting slavery’s traumatic magnitude on the Black community, African American literature is not removed from discussing past and present traumas that are pervasive in the Black community.
Author: Michelle Kelly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000215938
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Prison Writing and the Literary World tackles international prison writing and writing about imprisonment in relation to questions of literary representation and formal aesthetics, the “value” or “values” of literature, textual censorship and circulation, institutional networks and literary-critical methodologies. It offers scholarly essays exploring prison writing in relation to wartime internment, political imprisonment, resistance and independence creation, regimes of terror, and personal narratives of development and awakening that grapple with race, class and gender. Cutting across geospatial divides while drawing on nation- and region-specific expertise, it asks readers to connect the questions, examples and challenges arising from prison writing and writing about imprisonment within the UK and the USA, but also across continental Europe, Stalinist Russia, the Americas, Africa and the Middle East. It also includes critical reflection pieces from authors, editors, educators and theatre practitioners with experience of the fraught, testing and potentially inspiring links between prison and the literary world.
