Spheres public and private : Western genres in African literature / edited by Gordon Collier.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Collier, Gordon.

Series:

Matatu ; no. 39.

Matatu ; no. 39

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African literature.

Literary form.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (703 p.)

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Editions Rodopi, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The coverage displayed here is predomi-nantly on sub-Saharan literary production, and with a - perhaps systemic - focus on important aspects of political history and socio-political structures (including marxian analyses of the 'public sphere') and such crucial arenas as religious discipline, the tension between tradition and modernity, ecological awareness, family, and gender. Most of the discussions are traditionally content-oriented, but there are at least two essays (on Soyinka's Ake and on Amma Darko's The Housemaid) that attempt to come to grips narratologically with the medium of prose fiction itself. A quartet of essays with a more general purview - in-cluding a refreshing demontage of exclusive obeisance to (Western) ecriture - is fol-lowed by a section on poets, some canonical, others emergent: Ogaga Ifowodo, Jack Mapanje, Olu Oguibe, Tanure Ojaide, Okot p'Bitek, Wole Soyinka, Lade Wosornu. Essays on fiction cover general topics (women's fiction; political writing in Nigeria; the nightmare of Biafra), and land-mark texts both anglophone (Chinua Achebe, Amma Darko, Festus Iyayi, Ng g wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka), francophone (Mariama Ba, Mongo Beti, and Ousmane Sembene), and - a novum for Matatu - hispanophone (Donato Ndongo). The theatre section has essays on Ama Ata Aidoo, Zakes Mda, Anne Tanyi-Tang, Soyinka, and Ahmed Yerima, as well as Ng g and Mugo. We are especially pleased to be able to offer accomplished original poetry, short stories, and a complete drama text. Four comprehensive essay-reviews (on literary criticism, cinema, graphic art, and traditional African society) round out this issue.

Contents:

""Cover""; ""Title Page""; ""Copyright Page""; ""Table of Contents""; ""Prefatory Note""; ""OVERVIEWS""; ""Imagined Transformation: Notes on a Postcolonialism of African Literature""; ""African Literature: A Showcase for Africa�s Leadership Problems""; ""Lit-Orature Development, World Peace, and the Challenges of Literary Theory/Criticism""; ""Thematization and Perspectivization of Conflict in Selected Yorùbá Literary Genres""; ""POETRY""; ""Paths of Revolutionary Contestation: Wole Soyinka�s Poetry and the Dialectic of Liberal Humanism""

""Contentious Absolutism: The Public Sphere and the Imperative of Circumvention in Ngugi�s Wizard of the Crow""""Subversion and the Carnivalesque: Images of Resistance in Ngũgĩ wa Thiong�o�s Wizard of the Crow""; ""What�s In a Title? A Reading of Amma Darko�s The Housemaid""; ""The Problems of Perspective in Mongo Beti�s The Poor Christ of Bomba""; ""Epistolarity as Ethnography of Rebellion (or Alienation): Western Education and Its After-Effects on the Female Subject in Mariama Bâ�s So Long a Letter""

""The �Inside� Wife and the �Outside� Wives in Ahmed Yerima�s The Sisters""

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1-283-25044-6

9786613250445

94-012-0074-2