Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Routledge Study Guide (Routledge Guides to Literature)

Offering an insight into African culture that had not been portrayed before, Things Fall Apart is both a tragic and moving story of an individual set in the wider context of the coming of colonialism, as well as a powerful and complex political statement of cross-cultural encounters. This guide to Chinua Achebe’s compelling novel offers: <ul>
<li>an accessible introduction to the text and contexts of Things Fall Apart</li> <li>a critical history, surveying the many interpretations of the text from publication to the present </li> <li>a selection of critical writing on Things Fall Apart, by Abiola Irele, Abdul JanMohamed, Biodun Jeyifo, Florence Stratton and Ato Quayson, providing a variety of perspectives on the novel and extending the coverage of key critical approaches identified in the survey section</li> <li>cross-references between sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism</li> <li>suggestions for further reading. </li>
</ul>
Part of the Routledge Guides to Literature series, this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of Things Fall Apart and seeking not only a guide to the novel, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Achebe’s text.

Literature & Fiction

Whittaker, David

Msiska, Mpalive-Hangson

History & Criticism

Routledge

Writing and Africa (Crosscurrents)

This volume reflects one of the new areas of English Studies as it broadens to take in non-western literatures, and places more emphasis on the contexts and broader notions of `writing'. In discussing writing from and about Africa, this collection touches on studies in black writing, colonialism and imperialism and cultural development in the third world. It begins by providing a historical introduction to the main regional traditions, and then builds on this to discuss major issues, such as oral tradition, the significance of `literature' as a western import, representations of Africa in western writing, African writing against colonialism and its themes and politics in a post-colonial world, popular writing and the representation of women.

British & Irish

The book reconsiders Soyinka's contribution to the debate about African identity, exploring the various elements constituting his distinctive aesthetic and apprehension of African culture. It concentrates on his plays, his fiction and poetry and investigates his views on the relationship between myth, history, and modernity, primarily highlighting his conception of the nature of African post-colonial society and power.

Wole Soyinka (Writers and Their Work)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Liverpool University Press

This volume reflects one of the new areas of English Studies as it broadens to take in non-western literatures, and places more emphasis on the contexts and broader notions of `writing'. In discussing writing from and about Africa, this collection touches on studies in black writing, colonialism and imperialism and cultural development in the third world. It begins by providing a historical introduction to the main regional traditions, and then builds on this to discuss major issues, such as oral tradition, the significance of `literature' as a western import, representations of Africa in western writing, African writing against colonialism and its themes and politics in a post-colonial world, popular writing and the representation of women.

Hyland, Paul

Soyinka's representation of postcolonial African identity is re-examined in the light of his major plays, novels and poetry to show how this writer's idiom of cultural authenticity both embraces hybridity and defines itself as specific and particular. For Soyinka, such authenticity involves recovering tradition and inserting it in postcolonial modernity to facilitate transformative moral and political justice. The past can be both our enabling future and our nemesis. In a distinctive approach grounded in cultural studies, Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka locates the artist's intellectual and political concerns within the broader field of postcolonial cultural theory, arguing that, although ostensibly distant from mainstream theory, Soyinka focuses on fundamental questions concerning international culture and political identity formations the relationship between myth and history / tradition and modernity, and the unresolved tension between power as a force for good or evil. Soyinka's treatment of the relationship between individual selfhood and the various framing social and collective identities, so the book argues, is yet another aspect linking his work to the broader intellectual currents of today. Thus, Soyinka's vision is seen as central to contemporary efforts to grasp the nature of modernity. His works conceptualize identity in ways that promote and modify national perceptions of 'Africanness', rescuing them from the colonial and neocolonial logic of cultural denigration in a manner that fully acknowledges the cosmopolitan and global contexts of African postcolonial formation.  Overall, what emerges from the present study is the conviction that, in Soyinka's work, it is the capacity to assume personal and collective agency and the particular choices made by particular subjects at given historical moments that determine the trajectory of change and ultimately the nature of postcolonial existence itself. Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka is a major and imaginative contribution to the study of Wole Soyinka, African literature, and postcolonial cultural theory and one in which writing and creativity stand in fruitful symbiosis with the critical sense. It should appeal to Soyinka scholars, to students of African literature, and to anyone interested in postcolonial and cultural theory.  Contents** Preface** Acknowledgements** Introduction** 1 Myth, History and Postcolonial Modernity** 2 Tradition and Modernity** 3 The Banality of Postcolonial Power** 4 The Abyss of Postcolonial Formation** 5 Resources for Redemption** Work Cited**

Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka (Cross/Cultures, 93)

Brill Academic Pub

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Msiska, Mpalive-Hangson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Msiska, Mpalive-Hangson

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Msiska, Mpalive-Hangson. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Routledge Study Guide (Routledge Guides to Literature)

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart: A Routledge Study Guide (Routledge Guides to Literature)

Writing and Africa (Crosscurrents)

Wole Soyinka (Writers and Their Work)

Writing and Africa (Crosscurrents)

Postcolonial Identity in Wole Soyinka (Cross/Cultures, 93)