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Flat Style: Things Fall Apart and Its Illustrations.
- Source :
-
PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America . Jan2016, Vol. 131 Issue 1, p20-37. 18p. - Publication Year :
- 2016
-
Abstract
- In the early 1960s two editions of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart were published with competing sets of illustrations. The first, by Dennis Carabine, illustrates a realist novel, the second, by Uche Okeke, a modernist one. Reading Achebe's iconic novel through its early publication history and for its visual images shows how the famous ending of Things Fall Apart turns, stylistically, to the impenetrable flatness of the modernist surface. At mid-century, modernist style could be made to serve realist imperatives, and Achebe's flat style challenges colonial modes of literary representation and the myth of modernist primitivism in the visual arts. This essay stresses the importance of the visual image to mid-century anglophone literature and the importance of modernist style to the poetics of decolonization [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *ETHNOLOGY
*MODERNISM (Art)
*REALISM
*ART
*LITERARY criticism
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00308129
- Volume :
- 131
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 114499347
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2016.131.1.20