"'With love for my people': Chika Unigwe's Night Dancer"

Conference (2013, March 21)

Towards a Stylistic Model for Analysing Anglophone African Literatures: Preliminary Epistemological Considerations and a Case Study

in Makokha, J. K. S.; Obiero, Ogone John; West-Pavlov, Russell (Eds.) Style in African Literature: Essays on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles (2012)

Debates around the question of language in African literatures have been ubiquitous since the 1960s, yet only a relatively small number of studies have undertaken stylistic analyses of African works. At ... [more ▼]

Debates around the question of language in African literatures have been ubiquitous since the 1960s, yet only a relatively small number of studies have undertaken stylistic analyses of African works. At this stage, there is no clearly defined method enabling one to perform a comprehensive linguistic examination of African literatures in European languages. Focusing on Anglophone writing, this essay contends that the causes for this methodological shortcoming are chiefly epistemological. Part of the argument is that obstacles to the development of tools for a linguistic study of African literatures have presented themselves in relation to both the origin of the object of investigation and to the discipline of stylistics itself. It is also shown that these hurdles have been encountered in two distinct movements of linguistic research into African literatures: one focusing on the culturally-specific aspects of texts, and the other attempting a less context-dependent examination of literary pieces. After reviewing the different factors that have shaped – or hindered the development of – linguistic research into Anglophone African literatures over the years, the article outlines a methodological framework which, if further developed, may form the basis for a model of stylistic analysis. The combination of theories presented is then briefly used to interpret selected passages from the novel Purple Hibiscus (2003) by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. By way of conclusion, further lines of research are evoked. [less ▲]

Away from a Definition of African Literature(s)

in Cuder-Domínguez, Pilar; Ledent, Bénédicte (Eds.) New Perspectives on the Black Atlantic: Definitions, Readings, Practices, Dialogues (2012)

Caryl Phillips: Writing in the Key of Life

Book published by Rodopi (2012)

Writing in the Key of Life is the first critical collection devoted to the British-Caribbean author Caryl Phillips, a major voice in contemporary anglophone literatures. Phillips’s impressive body of ... [more ▼]

Writing in the Key of Life is the first critical collection devoted to the British-Caribbean author Caryl Phillips, a major voice in contemporary anglophone literatures. Phillips’s impressive body of fiction, drama, and non-fiction has garnered wide praise for its formal inventiveness and its incisive social criticism as well as its unusually sensitive understanding of the human condition. The twenty-six contributions offered here, including two by Phillips himself, address the fundamental issues that have preoccupied the writer in his now three-decades-long career – the enduring legacy of history, the intricate workings of identity, and the pervasive role of race, class, and gender in societies worldwide. Most of Phillips’s writing is covered here, in essays that approach it from various thematic and interpretative angles. These include the interplay of fact and fiction, Phillips’s sometimes ambiguous literary affiliations, his long-standing interest in the black and Jewish diasporas, his exploration of Britain and its ‘Others’, and his recurrent use of motifs such as masking and concealment. Writing in the Key of Life testifies to the vitality of Phillipsian scholarship and confirms the significance of an artist whose concerns, at once universal and topical, find particular resonance with the state of the world at the beginning of the twenty-first century. [less ▲]

Editorial: The Spirit of EACLALS

in EACLALS Newsletter (2011)

Ben Okri

in Gates, Henry Louis; Akyeampong, Emmanuel K. (Eds.) Dictionary of African Biography (vol. 5: Oding-Teres) (2011)

Review of Frameworks: Contemporary Criticism on Janet Frame, ed. by Jan Cronin & Simone Drichel

in Journal of Postcolonial Writing (2011), 47(3), 362-363

Stylistic Issues in New Nigerian Literature

Poster (2010, September 09)

Annotation of David Farrier's "'The other is the neighbour': The Limits of Dignity in Caryl Phillips's A Distant Shore"

in Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (2010)

Annotation of Antony Johae's "Wole Soyinka's 'Hamlet': The Rotten State of Denmark Revisited"

in Routledge Annotated Bibliography of English Studies (2010)