The African Imagination Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora

by Irele, F. Abiola

• ISBN13: 9780195086188
• ISBN10: 019508618X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-09-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This 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 criticalreadings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampate Ba, 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 awhole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.

Table of Contents

The African Imagination	3	(20)
Orality, Literacy, and African Literature	23	(16)
African Letters: The Making of a Tradition	39	(28)
Dimensions of African Discourse	67	(15)
Study in Ambiguity: Amadou Hampate Ba's The Fortunes of Wangrin	82	(16)
Narrative, History, and the African Imagination: Ahmadou Kourouma's Monne, outrages et defis	98	(17)
The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart	115	(39)
Return of the Native: Edward Kamau Brathwaite's Masks	154	(14)
A National Voice: The Poetry and Plays of John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo	168	(44)
Parables of the African Condition: The New Realism in African Fiction	212	(35)
Notes	247	(20)
Bibliography	267	(20)
Index	287