Texts, Tasks, and Theories
Versions and Subversions in African Literatures 3
Published on 1. January 2007
Book
Hardback
234 pages
978-90-420-2374-1 (ISBN)
Description
African literary theory has recently gained immensely from an emerging multitude of perspectives and scholarly approaches. This volume offers a welcome opportunity to assess trends in the twenty-first century's discourse on African literature: Twelve different articles treat such lively issues as modernity, nation, civil society, postcolonial theory, and feminism, relating these both to more recent short stories, poems, and novels and to a large variety of texts that have in one way or another acquired canonical status. The first section "Language, Modernity and Modernism" explores ocial and aesthetic figurations of modernity in African literary discourse. "New Readings in African Literature and Postcolonial Theory" offers fresh and critical approaches to this hotly contested area. In the closing section, "Identity, Dissidence and Cultural Practice," the questions tackled concern the role of literature and the African writer in an increasingly plural and diversifying social environment. Some of the authors treated in detail are: Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Okot p'Bitek, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nuruddin Farah, Nadine Gordimer, Helon Habila, Kojo Laing, Alexander Kanengoni, Farida Karodia, Lewis Nkosi, Flora Nwapa, Ike Oguine, Ben Okri, and Wole Soyinka.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Publishing group
Brill
Target group
Adult education
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 239 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 32 mm
Weight
535 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-420-2374-1 (9789042023741)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
TOBIAS ROBERT KLEIN is an associate member of the International Centre for African Music and Dance at the University of Ghana. His research interests centre on the literary and musical cultures of Western Europe and West Africa. ULRIKE AUGA is a professor of Theology and Gender Studies at the Humboldt University, Berlin. Her publications include the critique of intellectuals, 'national identities' in transition; gender issues, and, more recently, religion; and human rights and the notion of sexuality. VIOLA PRUESCHENK graduated from Humboldt University, Berlin, with an M.A. in African studies and ethnomusicology. She is currently working on a dissertation on the process of intermediality (music in written texts) in African and Caribbean literatures.
Content
Acknowledgements and Notice
Introduction
Tobias Robert KLEIN, Ulrike AUGA & Viola PRUESCHENK: Postcolonialism, Gender, and Modernity: African Literatures and the Agendas of Theory at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century
Language, Modernism, and Modernity
Simon GIKANDI: African Literature and Modernity
Frank SCHULZE-ENGLER: African Literature and the Micropolitics of Modernity: Post-Traditional Society in Wole Soyinka's Season of Anomy, Nuruddin Farah's Sardines, and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions
Tobias Robert KLEIN: Kojo Laing and the Cultural Specifics of an African Modernity
Fred OPALI: Romantic and African Notions of Poetic Language: Shelley and Okot p'Bitek
New Readings in African Literature and Postcolonial Theory
Kwadwo OSEI-NYAME: Toward the Decolonization of African Postcolonial Theory: The Example of Kwame Appiah's In My Father's House vis-a-vis Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy, Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel, and Ike Oguine's A Squatter's Tale
Maik NWOSU: The River, the Earth, and the Spirit World: Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, and the Novel in Africa
Oyeniyi OKUNOYE: Postcoloniality, Modern African Poetry, and Counter-Disourse
Lindy STIEBEL: Looking at the Local /Locale: A Postcolonial Reading of Lewsi Nkosi's Mating Birds
African Literature and Contemporary Society: Identity, Dissidence, and Cultural Practice
Michael CHAPMAN: African Literature, African Literatures: Cultural Practice or Art Practice?
Pinkie MEKGWE: Theorizing African Feminism(s): The 'Colonial' Question
Katrin BERNDT: The Multilayered Construction of Identity in Alexander Kanengoni's Echoing Silences and Farida Karodia's "The Red Velvet Dress"
Ulrike AUGA: Intellectuals Between Resistance and Legitimation: The Cases of Nadine Gordimer and Christa Wolf
Notes on Contributors and Editors
Notes for Contributors
Introduction
Tobias Robert KLEIN, Ulrike AUGA & Viola PRUESCHENK: Postcolonialism, Gender, and Modernity: African Literatures and the Agendas of Theory at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century
Language, Modernism, and Modernity
Simon GIKANDI: African Literature and Modernity
Frank SCHULZE-ENGLER: African Literature and the Micropolitics of Modernity: Post-Traditional Society in Wole Soyinka's Season of Anomy, Nuruddin Farah's Sardines, and Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions
Tobias Robert KLEIN: Kojo Laing and the Cultural Specifics of an African Modernity
Fred OPALI: Romantic and African Notions of Poetic Language: Shelley and Okot p'Bitek
New Readings in African Literature and Postcolonial Theory
Kwadwo OSEI-NYAME: Toward the Decolonization of African Postcolonial Theory: The Example of Kwame Appiah's In My Father's House vis-a-vis Ama Ata Aidoo's Our Sister Killjoy, Helon Habila's Waiting for an Angel, and Ike Oguine's A Squatter's Tale
Maik NWOSU: The River, the Earth, and the Spirit World: Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, and the Novel in Africa
Oyeniyi OKUNOYE: Postcoloniality, Modern African Poetry, and Counter-Disourse
Lindy STIEBEL: Looking at the Local /Locale: A Postcolonial Reading of Lewsi Nkosi's Mating Birds
African Literature and Contemporary Society: Identity, Dissidence, and Cultural Practice
Michael CHAPMAN: African Literature, African Literatures: Cultural Practice or Art Practice?
Pinkie MEKGWE: Theorizing African Feminism(s): The 'Colonial' Question
Katrin BERNDT: The Multilayered Construction of Identity in Alexander Kanengoni's Echoing Silences and Farida Karodia's "The Red Velvet Dress"
Ulrike AUGA: Intellectuals Between Resistance and Legitimation: The Cases of Nadine Gordimer and Christa Wolf
Notes on Contributors and Editors
Notes for Contributors