Swahili beyond the boundaries : literature, language, and identity / Alamin Mazrui.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mazrui, Alamin, 1948-

Series:

Research in international studies. Africa series ; no. 85.

Ohio University research in international studies. Africa series ; no. 85

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Swahili literature--History and criticism.

Swahili literature.

Literature and society--Africa, East.

Literature and society.

Africa, East.

Physical Description:

x, 206 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : Ohio University Press, [2007]

Summary:

Africa is a marriage of cultures, and nowhere is this fusion more evident than in the formation of Swahili, Eastern Africa's lingua franca. The beginnings of writing in Swahili can be traced to Afro-Arab contact on the East African seaboard that goes back to antiquity. Over time, Islam became an additional force in the consolidation of this melded heritage. The Swahili literary tradition partly grew out of this sustained cultural interchange.

More recently, Swahili literature has continued to be reconfigured by a conjuncture of global and local forces. As the interweaving of elements of the colonizer and the colonized, and of the dynamics and counterdynamics of post-Cold War globalization, this hybrid formation provides a representation of cultural difference that is said to constitute a third space, blurring existing boundaries and calling into question established categories of identity. These developments have sometimes evoked openness on questions of home and identity as well as, paradoxically, put closure on certain forms of subjectivity.

Swahili beyond the Boundaries: Literature, Language, and Identity adresses these moving frontiers of Swahili literature under the impetus of new waves of globalization in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this highly original work, Alamin Mazrui charts and analyzes the momentous changes that have generated much theoretical debate as Swahili literature continues to undergo transformation.

Contents:

Introduction : hybridity reconfigured

The intercultural heritage of Swahili literature

Aesthetics of Swahili verse: between the "old" and the "new"

Religion and the boundaries of Swahili literature

Translation and the (re)configuration of the Swahili literary space

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-194) and index.

ISBN:

9780896802520

0896802523

OCLC:

76073939

Online:

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