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2. From Villain to Messiah: Colonial Discourse and the "Jesus-fication" of King Chaka in Thomas Mofolo's Chaka.
- Author
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Mengara, Daniel
- Subjects
- *
SIN , *SALVATION , *IMPERIALISM , *FICTION , *ECONOMIC underdevelopment - Abstract
This paper reappraises Thomas Mofolo's Chaka as a novel that covertly subverts the biblical and colonial notions of sin, salvation, and backwardness that were part of the colonialist enterprise's ideological corpus in Africa—the so called "civilizing mission"—and very astutely deconstructs, and then reconstructs, the character of Chaka into a messianic figure whose ultimate death (and betrayal) at the hands of his own attracts the kind of sympathy that is reserved only for fallen heroes and, consequently, prophets. While a number of critics have looked at some of the biblical implications of Mofolo's fictionalized rendering of the Zulu cultural and historical universe under king Chaka, it is only somewhat hesitantly that Chaka has been read assertively as an anticolonial and resistance novel that, by attributing to Chaka a trajectory and destiny that closely mirror those of Jesus Christ, has sought to subvert the missionary ethos of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
3. Alain Mabanckou and the Category of World Literature.
- Author
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Coly, Ayo A.
- Subjects
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AFRICAN literature , *INFLUENCE (Literary, artistic, etc.) , *FICTION - Abstract
This paper argues that Congolese-born French writer Alain Mabanckou is the architect and creative entrepreneur of a world literature project that unmakes the Francophone African novel into a world literature text and recalibrates the relations between literary traditions in the category of world literature. The undisciplined intertextuality of Mabanckou's Verre cassé [ Broken Glass ], the novel that propelled him onto the global literary marketplace, serves as a good example of the new geopolitics of literature that the writer envisions. These are horizontal geopolitics, along the lines of what Kenyan writer and scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o theorized, albeit in utopian fashion, as "globalectics," meaning a horizontal way of doing and reading world literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
4. Rites of Triangulation in Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles.
- Subjects
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PSYCHOLOGICAL criticism , *LITERARY criticism , *FICTION , *AFRICAN literature -- History & criticism , *TRIANGULATION - Abstract
The relationship between the novel and the nation continues to vex theorists as spatial categories shift and evolve around the globe. Moses Isegawa's Abyssinian Chronicles, a novel with much acclaim but little critical attention, speaks to this relationship and suggests that the contemporary novel can serve as a vehicle for unmapping the nation. This paper argues that Isegawa's text transcends formal and geographical boundaries, respatializing the coming-of-age text by creating a protagonist who embodies a migrational spatial practice. In particular, it looks at the novel's final two books, 'Triangular Revelations' and 'Ghettoblaster,' and claims that Abyssinian Chroniclesreplaces the rite of incorporation with a rite of triangulation comprised of ongoing mobility and a dynamic and deconstructive cartographical approach. This approach accounts for the cartographical disjunctions of the contemporary era and serves as a rejoinder to the imperialist and interventionist maps imposed on the continent in earlier periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
5. Pupils, Witch Doctor, Vengeance: Amos Tutuola as Playwright.
- Author
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Dunton, Chris
- Subjects
- *
NOVELISTS , *AUTHORS , *DRAMA , *FICTION , *DRAMATISTS - Abstract
Although he is known primarily as a novelist, between 1959 and 1982 Amos Tutuola wrote at least three plays—The Pupils of the Eyes, Ajaiyi and the Witch Doctor, and Sword of Vengeance—of all which remain unpublished. After an introductory account of the circumstances that appear to have led Tutuola to develop an interest in dramatic literature, this paper explores the thematic concerns of the plays and relates these to the thematic territory of Tutuola's fiction, in particular to the novel Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty. All three plays are shown to provide further evidence of Tutuola's preoccupation with conditions of isolation and marginalization, with the vulnerability of the individual to the schemes of the unscrupulous and greedy, and with the problematic nature of trust. In addition, the paper highlights Tutuola's attempts to develop his craft as a dramatist and in particular the difficulties he appears to have faced in handling the conventions of the dramatic text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
6. Christopher Okigbo, Poetry Magazine, and the "Lament of the Silent Sisters".
- Author
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Echeruo, Michael J.C.
- Subjects
- *
POETRY (Literary form) , *LITERATURE , *FICTION , *POETS - Abstract
Christoper Okigbo thought highly enough of his "Lament of the Silent Sisters" to revise it and submit it to Poetry magazine in May 1963. "I have already been heard in Africa and in Europe, and would want, if possible, to have an audience in America," he wrote to the editor. The poem was not published, not least because of the magazine's policy of not publishing material previously published … "anywhere, in any form." This article examines the revisions which Okigbo made to the earlier version of the poem both for the submission to Poetry and for Labyrinths. The revision show Okigbo working and re-working his themes, generously incorporating material from other writers, and changing the argument and direction of his poem along the way. The paper draws attention to the complex processes that produced the poems and that are required to understand and evaluate them. Much more will be known about these processes when Okigbo's papers (such as survived the Biafra War) became available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2004
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
7. Metonymic Eruptions: Igbo Novelists, the Narrative of the Nation, and New Developments in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel.
- Author
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Nwakanma, Obi
- Subjects
- *
NOVELISTS , *IGBO (African people) , *FICTION , *ENGLISH language - Abstract
Nigeria's postcolonial nationality has been marked by disjunctions that continue to highlight its character, as a product of the colonial will, and of what Biodun Jeyifo has articulated as "arrested decolonization"--the basis of its problematic modernity. Nigeria is, in its current formation, a hybrid state; a nation of multiple nations coalescing to form the basis of nationness and national belonging. One of the fundamental sources of its evolution is to be found in its literature, particularly in poetry, that most nationalist of genres, but significantly also, in the form of the novel, which constitutes much of the narrative of nation. Modern Nigerian literature can now be categorized in three to four movements, or generations, starting with the Azikiwe/ Osadebe generation of nationalist poets, to the late modernists Achebe, Okigbo, Soyinka, etc., to the current generation or category of writer whose writings encompass the new attitudes, desires, values, and anxieties of the postcolonial nation. In this paper, I specifically examine the intriguing presence or overwhelming prominence of Igbo novelists writing in the English language, whose works, I argue, are currently defining the canon of contemporary Nigerian national literature. I claim the implicit value of Igbo traveling identity in the formation of the modern state as providing the cultural and historical factors, stimulus or circumstances that animate this literature. The nature of the Igbo traveling identity--its cosmopolitanism, transborder claims, and new metropolitan tropes--permits us therefore to fully comprehend the nature of Nigeria's contemporary cultural production as well as its implication or significance in shaping modern, postcolonial Nigerian identity and the direction of its narrative of the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2008
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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