Download or read book Theory of African Literature written by Chidi Amuta and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 1989 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic work that overturns conventional assessments of African literature, offering a unique contribution to literary criticism.
Download or read book Theories of Africans written by Christopher L. Miller and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Situating literature and anthropology in mutual interrogation, Miller's...book actually performs what so many of us only call for. Nowhere have all the crucial issues been brought together with the sort of critical sophistication it displays."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr. ". . . a superb cross-disciplinary analysis."—Y. Mudimbe
Download or read book African Literature written by Tejumola Olaniyan and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2007-07-10 with total page 796 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first anthology to bring together the key texts of African literary theory and criticism. Brings together key texts that are otherwise hard to locate Covers all genres and critical schools Provides the intellectual context for understanding African literature Facilitates the future development of African literary criticism
Download or read book African American Literary Theory written by Winston Napier and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2000-07 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty-one essays by writers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as critics and academics such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examine the central texts and arguments in African American literary theory from the 1920s through the present. Contributions are organized chronologically beginning with the rise of a black aesthetic criticism, through the Black Arts Movement, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, queer theory, and cultural studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Theory of African Literature written by Chidi Amuta and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 349 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.
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:
Download or read book Encyclopedia of African Literature written by Simon Gikandi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book covers all the key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts. While the greatest proportion of literary work in Africa has been a product of the twentieth century, the Encyclopedia also covers the literature back to the earliest eras of story-telling and oral transmission, making this a unique and valuable resource for those studying social sciences as well as humanities. This work includes cross-references, suggestions for further reading, and a comprehensive index.
Download or read book Proverbs Textuality and Nativism in African Literature written by Adeleke Adeeko and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Provocative, original, and consistently engaging. . . . It deals with the most significant issues in African literary studies today, issues of language, ideology, and identity that are relevant around the world."--Christopher L. Miller, Yale University In one of the first studies to connect anglophone literary criticism with African localist tendencies of nativism, Ad��k� argues that nativism is a highly productive and intensely generative category in the formation of African literature and criticism. He shows the complexities of nativism (the call for authenticity and identity) both in writing and criticism and proposes that virtually all influential African criticism and writing can be discussed under any combination of three varieties of nativism: classical, structuralist, and linguistic. In the process of arguing that the nativist temperament is not alien to contemporary literary theory and that the theories do not negate the motivating spirit of nativism, Ad��k� offers a self-reflexive reading of representative oral and written, national and ethnic African literatures. He suggests a deconstructive reading of Yoruba meta-proverbs and connects the critical arts of such well-known writers as Chinua Achebe (Arrow of God), Ayi Kwei Armah (Thousand Seasons), and Ngugi wa Thiongo (Devil on the Cross) to those of other national and ethnic writers like Femi Osofisan (Kolera Kolej) and Oladejo Okediji (Rere Run). Ad�l�ke Ad��k� is assistant professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder. His work has appeared in Ariel, Imprimatur, and Pretexts.
Download or read book Africa Writes Back to Self written by Evan M. Mwangi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-07-02 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The profound effects of colonialism and its legacies on African cultures have led postcolonial scholars of recent African literature to characterize contemporary African novels as, first and foremost, responses to colonial domination by the West. In Africa Writes Back to Self, Evan Maina Mwangi argues instead that the novels are primarily engaged in conversation with each other, particularly over emergent gender issues such as the representation of homosexuality and the disenfranchisement of women by male-dominated governments. He covers the work of canonical novelists Nadine Gordimer, Chinua Achebe, NguÅgiÅ wa Thiong'o, and J. M. Coetzee, as well as popular writers such as Grace Ogot, David Maillu, Promise Okekwe, and Rebeka Njau. Mwangi examines the novels' self-reflexive fictional strategies and their potential to refigure the dynamics of gender and sexuality in Africa and demote the West as the reference point for cultures of the Global South.
Download or read book The Theory of African Literature written by Chidi Amuta and published by . This book was released on with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideological formations in the criticism of African literature -- Traditionalism and the quest for an African literary aesthetic -- Marxism and African literature -- A dialectical theory of African literature: categories and springboards -- Issues and problems in African literature: A dialectical revision -- History and the dialectics of narrative in the African novel -- Drama and revolution in Africa -- Poetry and liberation politics in Africa -- Beyond decolonization.
Download or read book Text Theory Space written by Kate Darian-Smith and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Text, Theory, Space is a landmark in post-colonial criticism and theory. Focusing on two white settler societies, South Africa and Australia, the contributors investigate the meaning of 'the South' as an aesthetic, political, geographical and cultural space. Drawing upon a wide range of disciplines which include literature, history, urban and cultural geography, politics and anthropology, the contributors examine crucial issues including: * defining what 'the South' encompasses * investigating ideas of space, history, land and landscape * claiming, naming and possessing land * national and personal boundaries * questions of race, gender and nationalism
Download or read book Oral Literature in Africa written by Ruth Finnegan and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.
Download or read book Remapping African Literature written by Olabode Ibironke and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-12 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of African Literature written by Moradewun Adejunmobi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-13 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138713864_oachapter4.pdf
Download or read book Decolonising the Mind written by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 1986 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ngugi wrote his first novels and plays in English but was determined, even before his detention without trial in 1978, to move to writing in Gikuyu.
Download or read book A New Generation of African Writers written by Brenda Cooper and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 2013 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brenda Cooper examines the work of the new generation of African writers who have placed migration as central to their writing
Download or read book Singing the Law written by Peter Leman and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-18 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Singing the Law is about the legal lives and afterlives of oral cultures in East Africa, particularly as they appear within the pages of written literatures during the colonial and postcolonial periods. In examining these cultures, this book begins with an analysis of the cultural narratives of time and modernity that formed the foundations of British colonial law. Recognizing the contradictory nature of these narratives (i.e., both promoting and retreating from the Euro-centric ideal of temporal progress) enables us to make sense of the many representations of and experiments with non-linear, open-ended, and otherwise experimental temporalities that we find in works of East African literature that take colonial law as a subject or point of critique. Many of these works, furthermore, consciously appropriate orature as an expressive form with legal authority. This affords them the capacity to challenge the narrative foundations of colonial law and its postcolonial residues and offer alternative models of temporality and modernity that give rise, in turn, to alternative forms of legality. East Africa’s “oral jurisprudence” ultimately has implications not only for our understanding of law and literature in colonial and postcolonial contexts, but more broadly for our understanding of how the global south has shaped modern law as we know and experience it today.
