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Book Literary Criticism  Critical Theory and Post Colonial African Literature

Download or read book Literary Criticism Critical Theory and Post Colonial African Literature written by Chinyere Nwahunanya and published by Arbi Pres. This book was released on 2012 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nwahunanya examines major issues in contemporary literary criticism and critical theory especially as they concern African literature. Both diachronic and synchronic in his approach, he addresses mainstream issues that come under the purvey of literary criticism and literary history, the aesthetics of African poetry and the relationship between African dramatists and dramatists of the Absurd.

Book Theory of African Literature

Download or read book Theory of African Literature written by Chidi Amuta and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking work, first published in 1989, was one of the first to challenge the conventional critical assessment of African literature, and remains highly influential today. Amuta's key argument is that African literature can be discussed only within the wider framework of the dismantling of colonial rule and Western hegemony in Africa. In exploring the possibility of a dialectical, alternative critical base, he draws upon both classical Marxist aesthetics and the theories of African culture espoused by Fanon, Cabral and Ngugi. From these explorations, Amuta derives a new language of criticism, which is then applied to works by modern African writers as diverse as Achebe, Ousmane, Agostinho Neto and Dennis Brutus. Amuta's highly original and innovative approach remains relevant not only for assessing the literature of developing countries, but for Marxist and postcolonial theories of literary criticism more generally. The author's elegance of argument and clarity of exposition makes this a distinguished and lasting contribution to debates around cultural expression in postcolonial Africa.

Book Academic Discourses on African Postcolonial Literature in the Past 20 Years

Download or read book Academic Discourses on African Postcolonial Literature in the Past 20 Years written by Anna Poppen and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Project Report from the year 2012 in the subject Literature - Africa, grade: 1,0, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, language: English, abstract: The academic discourse on African postcolonial literature is characterized by a continuous process of debates on a variety of issues, reassessments of theories and redefinitions of terms. The term African postcolonial literature refers to writings produced after the political independence of various African states which were formerly subject to European colonial rule. Most of this literature written by African authors in their home countries or in diaspora deals with issues of colonial experience or decolonization. However, as Graham Huggan points out, the term African literature is a problematic concept, because “it conveys a fiction of homogeneity” and ignores the cultural variety existing on the African continent. Gikandi explains that the foundations of modern African literature have been laid by the process of colonization, e.g through education in Christian schools which have enabled today’s forms of literature. Gikandi emphasizes the irony of this fact: “[W]hile the majority of African writers were the products of colonial institutions, they turned to writing to oppose colonialism.” This leads to various problems when dealing with African writings, especially when applying the viewpoint of postcolonial criticism, which has been trying to theorize African writings since the 1980s. As Huggan points out, postcolonial criticism has been criticized “as subscribing to the very binaries (e.g. ‘Europe and its Others’) it seeks to resist.” This paper contains an annotated bibliography which considers various issues regarding African postcolonial literature that have been discussed in the past 20 years. Here, the term African postcolonial literature is understood in a temporal way (referring to the postcolonial era in Africa) and in an academic way (referring to the postcolonial discourse). The articles, collections of essays and monographs listed in the bibliography only provide glimpses at the extensive and elaborate discourses on African postcolonial writings. However, the entries in the bibliography have been categorized in order to cast a light on the main issues and problems discussed in this field. In the following, introductory works and texts dealing with the two main genres of African literature will be presented first. Works referring to postcolonial theory and consequential problems and debates (e.g. on language) take the major part of the bibliography.

Book Critical Theory and African Literature Today

Download or read book Critical Theory and African Literature Today written by Eldred Durosimi Jones and published by Africa Research and Publications. This book was released on 1995-05 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the literary criticism of modern African Literature.

Book Postcolonial Imagination and Moral Representations in African Literature and Culture

Download or read book Postcolonial Imagination and Moral Representations in African Literature and Culture written by Chielozona Eze and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The postcolonial African culture, as it is discoursed in the academia, is largely influenced by Africa's response to colonialism. To the degree that it is a response, it is to considerably reactive, and lacks forceful moral incentives for social critical consciousness and nation-building. Quite on the contrary, it allows especially African political leaders to luxuriate in the delusions of moral rectitude, imploring, at will, the evil of imperialism as a buffer to their disregard of their people. This book acknowledges the social and psychological devastations of colonialism on the African world. It, however, argues that the totality of African intellectual response to colonialism and Western imperialism is equally, if not more, damaging to the African world. In what ways does the average African leader, indeed, the average African, judge and respond to his world? How does he conceive of his responsibility towards his community and society? The most obvious impact of African response to colonialism is the implicit search for a pristine, innocent paradigm in, for instance, literary, philosophical, social, political and gender studies. This search has its own moral implication in the sense that it makes the taking of responsibility on individual and social level highly difficult. Focusing on the moral impact of responses to colonialism in Africa and the African Diaspora, this book analyzes the various manifestations of delusions of moral innocence that has held the African leadership from the onerous task of bearing responsibility for their countries; it argues that one of the ways to recast the African leaders' responsibility towards Africa is to let go, on the one hand, the gaze of the West, and on the other, of the search for the innocent African experience and cultures. Relying on the insights of thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Achille Mbembe and Wolgang Welsch, this book suggests new approaches to interpreting African experiences. It discusses select African works of fiction as a paradigm for new interpretations of African experiences.

Book Using Critical Theory

Download or read book Using Critical Theory written by Lois Tyson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lois Tyson explains the basic concepts of six critical theories in popular academic use today-psychoanalytic, Marxist, feminist, gay/lesbian, African-American, and post-colonial-and shows how they can be employed to interpret five short literary works in the book.

Book Critical Theory   African Literature Today

Download or read book Critical Theory African Literature Today written by Eldred D. Jones and published by James Currey Publishers. This book was released on 1994 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North America: Africa World Press

Book Postcolonial Criticism

Download or read book Postcolonial Criticism written by Bart Moore-Gilbert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-05-12 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Post-colonial theory is a relatively new area in critical contemporary studies, having its foundations more Postcolonial Criticism brings together some of the most important critical writings in the field, and aims to present a clear overview of, and introduction to, one of the most exciting and rapidly developing areas of contemporary literary criticism. It charts the development of the field both historically and conceptually, from its beginnings in the early post-war period to the present day. The first phase of postcolonial criticism is recorded here in the pioneering work of thinkers like Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, and Gayatri Spivak. More recently, a new generation of academics have provided fresh assessments of the interaction of class, race and gender in cultural production, and this generation is represented in the work of Aijaz Ahmad, bell hooks, Homi Bhabha, Abdul JanMohamed and David Lloyd. Topics covered include negritude, national culture, orientalism, subalternity, ambivalence, hybridity, white settler societies, gender and colonialism, culturalism, commonwealth literature, and minority discourse. The collection includes an extensive general introduction which clearly sets out the key stages, figures and debates in the field. The editors point to the variety, even conflict, within the field, but also stress connections and parallels between the various figures and debates which they identify as central to an understanding of it. The introduction is followed by a series of ten essays which have been carefully chosen to reflect both the diversity and continuity of postcolonial criticism. Each essay is supported by a short introduction which places it in context with the rest of the author's work, and identifies how its salient arguments contribute to the field as a whole. This is a field which covers many disciplines including literary theory, cultural studies, philosophy, geography, economics, history and politics. It is designed to fit into the current modular arrangement of courses, and is therefore suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate courses which address postcolonial issues and the 'new' literatures in English.

Book Critical Theory and African Literature

Download or read book Critical Theory and African Literature written by Ernest Emenyo̲nu and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Postcolonial theory

Download or read book Postcolonial theory written by Dieter Riemenschneider and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book African Literature and Social Change

Download or read book African Literature and Social Change written by Olakunle George and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “George rethinks the entirety of African literature by considering texts from the 19th century and mid-20th century alongside canonical texts.” —Neil ten Kortenaar, author of Debt, Law, Realism Alert to the ways in which critical theory and imaginative literature can enrich each other, African Literature and Social Change reframes the ongoing project of African literature. Concentrating on texts that are not usually considered together—writings by little-known black missionaries, so called “black whitemen,” and better-known 20th century intellectuals and creative writers—Olakunle George shows the ways in which these writings have addressed notions of ethnicity, nation, and race and how the debates need to be rehistoricized today. George presents Africa as a site of complex desires and contradictions, refashioning the way African literature is positioned within current discussions of globalism, diaspora, and postcolonialism. “A bold exploration of the complexity of different modes of writing about Africa in the context of current debates on the nature of the literary in the production of African knowledge. Concerned with a rhetoric of self-writing as it has developed over two hundred years, Olakunle George attends to local details within the larger configurations of colonial discourse in this ambitious and timely work. It is a caution against the neglect of the conditions of possibility that made an African literature possible.” —Simon Gikandi, author of Slavery and the Culture of Taste “A new and welcome addition to the field of African literary studies, Olakunle George’s African Literature and Social Change is dense where it needs to be and glories in productive close readings when its objects call for it.” —Comparative Literature Studies

Book Postcolonial African Writers

Download or read book Postcolonial African Writers written by Siga Fatima Jagne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-11-12 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This reference book surveys the richness of postcolonial African literature. The volume begins with an introductory essay on postcolonial criticism and African writing, then presents alphabetically arranged profiles of some 60 writers, including Chinua Achebe, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Tahbar Ben Jelloun, among others. Each entry includes a brief biography, a discussion of major works and themes that appear in the author's writings, an overview of the critical response to the author's work, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. These profiles are written by expert contributors and reflect many different perspectives. The volume concludes with a selected general bibliography of the most important critical works on postcolonial African literature.

Book The Postcolonial Short Story

Download or read book The Postcolonial Short Story written by Maggie Awadalla and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-10-23 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book puts the short story at the heart of contemporary postcolonial studies and questions what postcolonial literary criticism may be. Focusing on short fiction between 1975 and today – the period in which critical theory came to determine postcolonial studies – it argues for a sophisticated critique exemplified by the ambiguity of the form.

Book What Postcolonial Theory Doesn t Say

Download or read book What Postcolonial Theory Doesn t Say written by Anna Bernard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reclaims postcolonial theory, addressing persistent limitations in the geographical, disciplinary, and methodological assumptions of its dominant formations. It emerges, however, from an investment in the future of postcolonial studies and a commitment to its basic premise: namely, that literature and culture are fundamental to the response to structures of colonial and imperial domination. To a certain extent, postcolonial theory is a victim of its own success, not least because of the institutionalization of the insights that it has enabled. Now that these insights no longer seem new, it is hard to know what the field should address beyond its general commitments. Yet the renewal of popular anti-imperial energies across the globe provides an important opportunity to reassert the political and theoretical value of the postcolonial as a comparative, interdisciplinary, and oppositional paradigm. This collection makes a claim for what postcolonial theory can say through the work of scholars articulating what it still cannot or will not say. It explores ideas that a more aesthetically sophisticated postcolonial theory might be able to address, focusing on questions of visibility, performance, and literariness. Contributors highlight some of the shortcomings of current postcolonial theory in relation to contemporary political developments such as Zimbabwean land reform, postcommunism, and the economic rise of Asia. Finally, they address the disciplinary, geographical, and methodological exclusions from postcolonial studies through a detailed focus on new disciplinary directions (management studies, international relations, disaster studies), overlooked locations and perspectives (Palestine, Weimar Germany, the commons), and the necessity of materialist analysis for understanding both the contemporary world and world literary systems.

Book Literary Criticism and Theory

Download or read book Literary Criticism and Theory written by Pelagia Goulimari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-15 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This incredibly useful volume offers an introduction to the history of literary criticism and theory from ancient Greece to the present. Grounded in the close reading of landmark theoretical texts, while seeking to encourage the reader's critical response, Pelagia Goulimari examines: major thinkers and critics from Plato and Aristotle to Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Said and Butler; key concepts, themes and schools in the history of literary theory: mimesis, inspiration, reason and emotion, the self, the relation of literature to history, society, culture and ethics, feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, queer theory; genres and movements in literary history: epic, tragedy, comedy, the novel; Romanticism, realism, modernism and postmodernism. Historical connections between theorists and theories are traced and the book is generously cross-referenced. With useful features such as key-point conclusions, further reading sections, descriptive text boxes, detailed headings, and with a comprehensive index, this book is the ideal introduction to anyone approaching literary theory for the first time or unfamiliar with the scope of its history.

Book Politics and Post Colonial Theory

Download or read book Politics and Post Colonial Theory written by Pal Ahluwalia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book makes sense of the complexities and dynamics of post-colonial politics, illustrating how post-colonial theory has marginalised a huge part of its constituency, namely Africa. Politics and Post-Colonial Theory traces how African identity has been constituted and reconstituted by examining issues such as: * negritude * the rise of nationalism * decolonisation. The book also questions how helpful post-colonial analysis can be in understanding the complexities which define institutions including: * the nation-state * civil society * human rights * citizenship. Politics and Post-colonial Theory bravely breaks down disciplinary boundaries. Its radical vision will be essential reading for all those engaged in Politics, post-colonial studies and African studies.

Book Postcolonial Theory

Download or read book Postcolonial Theory written by Leela Gandhi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Published twenty years ago, Leela Gandhi’s Postcolonial Theory was a landmark description of the field of postcolonial studies in theoretical terms that set its intellectual context alongside poststructuralism, postmodernism, Marxism, and feminism. Gandhi examined the contributions of major thinkers such as Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and the subaltern historians. The book pointed to postcolonialism’s relationship with earlier anticolonial thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and M. K. Gandhi and explained pertinent concepts and schools of thought—hybridity, Orientalism, humanism, Marxist dialectics, diaspora, nationalism, gendered subalternity, globalization, and postcolonial feminism. The revised edition of this classic work reaffirms its status as a useful starting point for readers new to the field and as a provocative account that opens up possibilities for debate. It includes substantial additions: A new preface and epilogue reposition postcolonial studies within evolving intellectual contexts and take stock of important critical developments. Gandhi examines recent alliances with critical race theory and Africanist postcolonialism, considers challenges from postsecular and postcritical perspectives, and takes into account the ontological, environmental, affective, and ethical turns in the changed landscape of critical theory. She describes what is enduring in postcolonial thinking—as a critical perspective within the academy and as an attitude to the world that extends beyond the discipline of postcolonial studies.