Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives

Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 222
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317076292
ISBN-13 : 131707629X
Rating : 4/5 (92 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives by : Donald R. Wehrs

Download or read book Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives written by Donald R. Wehrs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his study of the origins of political reflection in twentieth-century African fiction, Donald Wehrs examines a neglected but important body of African texts written in colonial (English and French) and indigenous (Hausa and Yoruba) languages. He explores pioneering narrative representations of pre-colonial African history and society in seven texts: Casely Hayford's Ethiopia Unbound (1911), Alhaji Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa's Shaihu Umar (1934), Paul Hazoumé's Doguicimi (1938), D.O. Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Daemons (1938), Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954), and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958). Wehrs highlights the role of pre-colonial political economies and articulations of state power on colonial-era considerations of ethical and political issues, and is attentive to the gendered implications of texts and authorial choices. By positioning Things Fall Apart as the culmination of a tradition, rather than as its inaugural work, he also reconfigures how we think of African fiction. His book supplements recent work on the importance of indigenous contexts and discourses in situating colonial-era narratives and will inspire fresh methodological strategies for studying the continent from a multiplicity of perspectives.

Claiming History

Claiming History
Author :
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Total Pages : 230
Release :
ISBN-10 : 023111351X
ISBN-13 : 9780231113519
Rating : 4/5 (1X Downloads)

Book Synopsis Claiming History by : Eleni Coundouriotis

Download or read book Claiming History written by Eleni Coundouriotis and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Places African literature--novels of the colonial and postcolonial periods, written in both French and English--in their proper context within the field of postcolonial studies and illustrates how historical narration not only "answers back" to Europe's colonialist legacy, but also serves as a complex form of dissent among Africans themselves.

The Surreptitious Speech

The Surreptitious Speech
Author :
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Total Pages : 500
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0226545067
ISBN-13 : 9780226545066
Rating : 4/5 (67 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Surreptitious Speech by : V. Y. Mudimbe

Download or read book The Surreptitious Speech written by V. Y. Mudimbe and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1992-09 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Distinguished scholar V. Y. Mudimbe assembles a lively tribute to Presence Africaine, the landmark African studies journal begun in 1947 Paris. While it celebrates the project's forty-year history, The Surreptitious Speech does not naively canonize the journal but rather offers a vibrant discussion and critical reading of its context, characteristics, and significance.

Decolonizing Translation

Decolonizing Translation
Author :
Publisher : Routledge
Total Pages : 291
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781317641148
ISBN-13 : 1317641140
Rating : 4/5 (48 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Decolonizing Translation by : Kathryn Batchelor

Download or read book Decolonizing Translation written by Kathryn Batchelor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The linguistically innovative aspect of Francophone African literature has been recognized and studied from a variety of angles over recent decades, yet little attention has been paid to what happens to such literature when it is translated into another language. Taking as its corpus all sub-Saharan Francophone African texts that have ever been published in English, this book explores the ways in which translators approach innovative features such as African-language borrowings, neologisms and other deliberate manipulations of French, depictions of sociolinguistic variation, and a variety of types of wordplay. The implications of their translation decisions are drawn out with reference to the broader significances that are often accorded to postcolonial literature, and earlier critics' calls for a decolonized translation practice are explored from both a practical and theoretical angle. These findings are used to push towards a detailed investigation of the postcolonial turn in translation studies, drawing on the work of key postcolonial theorists such has Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Spivak. This is a timely and incisive critical assessment of contemporary discourses on the ethics and politics of translation.

Packaging Post/coloniality

Packaging Post/coloniality
Author :
Publisher : Lexington Books
Total Pages : 206
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0739108565
ISBN-13 : 9780739108567
Rating : 4/5 (65 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Packaging Post/coloniality by : Richard Watts

Download or read book Packaging Post/coloniality written by Richard Watts and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Packaging Post/Coloniality, Richard Watts breaks from convention and reads Francophone books by their covers, focusing on the package over the content. Watts looks at the ways that the 'paratext'--the covers, illustrations, promotional summaries, epigraphs, dedications, and prefaces or forewords that enclose the text--mediates creative works by writers from sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia whose place in the French literary institution was and remains a source of conflict. In order to be acceptable for French bookstore shelves, the novels, essays, and collections of poetry created in colonial territories were deemed to need explanation and sponsorship by an authority in the field. Watts finds the French mission civilisatrice, or 'civilizing mission, ' manifest in prefaces, introductions, and dedications inserted in the books that appeared in the metropole during the height of French imperialism. In the postcolonial era, book packaging reveals a struggle to reverse the power dynamic: Francophone writers introduced each others' texts, yet books still appeared with covers promoting stereotypical images of the Francophone world. This fascinating journey through a particular cultural history of the book is a unique take on the quest for a literary identity. Watts concludes his study by looking at English mediations of Francophone works, with a chapter on reading and teaching Francophone literature in translation.

Research in African Literatures

Research in African Literatures
Author :
Publisher :
Total Pages : 424
Release :
ISBN-10 : UOM:39015066042576
ISBN-13 :
Rating : 4/5 (76 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Research in African Literatures by :

Download or read book Research in African Literatures written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 1- , spring 1970- , include "A Bibliography of American doctoral dissertations on African literature," compiled by Nancy J. Schmidt.

The Tongue-Tied Imagination

The Tongue-Tied Imagination
Author :
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
Total Pages : 312
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780823284306
ISBN-13 : 0823284301
Rating : 4/5 (06 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Tongue-Tied Imagination by : Tobias Warner

Download or read book The Tongue-Tied Imagination written by Tobias Warner and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, 2021 African Literature Association First Book Award Should a writer work in a former colonial language or in a vernacular? The language question was one of the great, intractable problems that haunted postcolonial literatures in the twentieth century, but it has since acquired a reputation as a dead end for narrow nationalism. This book returns to the language question from a fresh perspective. Instead of asking whether language matters, The Tongue-Tied Imagination explores how the language question itself came to matter. Focusing on the case of Senegal, Warner investigates the intersection of French and Wolof. Drawing on extensive archival research and an under-studied corpus of novels, poetry, and films in both languages, as well as educational projects and popular periodicals, the book traces the emergence of a politics of language from colonization through independence to the era of neoliberal development. Warner reads the francophone works of well-known authors such as Léopold Senghor, Ousmane Sembène, Mariama Bâ, and Boubacar Boris Diop alongside the more overlooked Wolof-language works with which they are in dialogue. Refusing to see the turn to vernacular languages only as a form of nativism, The Tongue-Tied Imagination argues that the language question opens up a fundamental struggle over the nature and limits of literature itself. Warner reveals how language debates tend to pull in two directions: first, they weave vernacular traditions into the normative patterns of world literature; but second, they create space to imagine how literary culture might be configured otherwise. Drawing on these insights, Warner brilliantly rethinks the terms of world literature and charts a renewed practice of literary comparison.