The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black DiasporaThis collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora. The African Imagination includes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampaté Bâ, and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters. |
Contents
The African Imagination | 3 |
Orality Literacy and Literature | 23 |
African Letters The Making of a Tradition | 39 |
Dimensions of African Discourse | 67 |
Study in Ambiguity Amadou Hampaté Bás The Fortunes of Wangrin | 82 |
Narrative History and the African Imagination Ahmadou Kouroumas Monnè outrages as défis | 98 |
The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebes Things Fall Apart | 115 |
Return of the Native Edward Kamau Brathwaites Masks | 154 |
A National Voice The Poetry and Plays of John Pepper ClarkBekederemo | 168 |
Parables of the African Condition The New Realism in African Fiction | 212 |
Notes | 247 |
| 267 | |
| 287 | |
Other editions - View all
The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora F. Abiola Irele Limited preview - 2001 |
The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora Abiola Irele Limited preview - 2001 |
Common terms and phrases
Achebe Achebe's Achebe's novel aesthetic African discourse African experience African imagination African letters African literature African writer Aimé Césaire Anomy awareness Beti's Birago Diop Black Brathwaite's character Chinua Achebe Clark-Bekederemo's collective colonial conception consciousness considered contemporary context conventions critical cultural dimension Diop distinctive dramatic emerges English epic essay essential European languages evocations fact fiction formal function genre griot Hampaté Bâ's historical human Ibadan ideological Igbo imaginative expression implications indigenous intellectual Kourouma's Léopold Sédar Senghor meaning mode modern African moral movement myth narrative narrator nature Negritude Nigerian Nigerian Civil War novel observation Okonkwo oral literature oral tradition Ouologuem Ozidi perspective play poems poet poet's poetic poetry political preoccupation present provides reference reflection relation represents seems Senghor sense significance situation social society Soyinka structure symbolic tension textual thematic theme Things Fall tion values vision Wangrin Western Xala Yambo Ouologuem Yoruba