Critiquing the Postcolonial Construct in Chinua Achebe’s Novels

Critiquing the Postcolonial Construct in Chinua Achebe’s Novels
Author: Ranjana Das Sarkhel
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 151
Release: 2018-11-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1527522016

Chinua Achebe’s novels have always been read as texts from an erstwhile colonised African nation, interpreted within the parameters suggested by postcolonial theorists. The confines of postcolonial readings have raised questions about when the ‘postcolonial’ period would end, so that writers would no longer need to ‘write back’ to the empire or ‘rewrite’ their histories. This work explores how Achebe’s novels articulate his knowledge of his own people and the manner in which he participates in the politics of representation. He critiques the postcolonial methodology, and seeks out, recovers and provides an alternative narrative of the postcolonial experience and its aftermath, even as he seems to be moving beyond it. Achebe’s narratives do not conform to the postcolonial constructs of history as telling (rather than recalling) and of nations in terms of states (rather than people). Achebe combines the techniques available to historians (documentation) with those of novelists (the imaginative re-creation of events) for his fictional evocation of the past. He emphasises both the African artists’ role in helping to create a more egalitarian society and that of the act of storytelling as a shaping force in people’s lives. As he negotiates between his narrative form and realistic subject matter, Achebe puts forward a powerful critique of colonisation and its aftermath. Achebe represents a canonical voice in the emerging discourse of writers struggling to break free from the clichéd world of anti-imperialism and decolonisation.

The Education of a British-Protected Child

The Education of a British-Protected Child
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Penguin Group
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2009-10-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307272907

From one of the greatest writers of the modern era, an intimate and essential collection of personal essays on home, identity, and colonialism Chinua Achebe’s characteristically eloquent and nuanced voice is everywhere present in these seventeen beautifully written pieces. From a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria to considerations on the African-American Diaspora, from a glimpse into his extraordinary family life and his thoughts on the potent symbolism of President Obama’s elections—this charmingly personal, intellectually disciplined, and steadfastly wise collection is an indispensable addition to the remarkable Achebe oeuvre.

Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1994-09-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385474547

“A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Satire and the Postcolonial Novel

Satire and the Postcolonial Novel
Author: John Clement Ball
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780415965934

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Milestones in African Literature

Milestones in African Literature
Author: Toyin Falola
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2024-07-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1040093817

Milestones in African Literature offers an accessible guide to ten key moments in African literature. It traces literature in Africa through forms and genres, as well as social and political changes. Toyin Falola embraces the richness of African literature, and considers the oral tradition, pre-colonial literature, apartheid, print media and digital literature, postcolonialism, and migration literature. He explores the realities of African people by drawing from and highlighting peoples’ convictions, spirituality, and pasts. The book reveals African literature’s capacity to convey cultural, social, and political messages through storytelling, while depicting the social structures and cultural norms that shape these experiences through the examination of perspectives and literary works of African authors. Milestones in African Literature is the ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students interested in African literatures. It will also be invaluable for teachers and researchers aiming to strengthen their knowledge.

The Palgrave Handbook of African Oral Traditions and Folklore

The Palgrave Handbook of African Oral Traditions and Folklore
Author: Akintunde Akinyemi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 1041
Release: 2021-03-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030555178

This handbook offers the most comprehensive, analytic, and multidisciplinary study of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the African Diaspora to date. Preeminent scholars Akintunde Akinyemi and Toyin Falola assemble a team of leading and rising stars across African Studies research to retrieve and renew the scholarship of oral traditions and folklore in Africa and the Diaspora just as critical concerns about their survival are pushed to the forefront of the field. With five sections on the central themes within orality and folklore – including engagement ranging from popular culture to technology, methods to pedagogy – this handbook is an indispensable resource to scholars, students, and practitioners of oral traditions and folklore preservation alike. This definitive reference is the first to provide detailed, systematic discussion, and up-to-date analysis of African oral traditions and folklore.

Postcolonial Poetics

Postcolonial Poetics
Author: Elleke Boehmer
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2018-06-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319903411

Postcolonial Poetics is about how we read postcolonial and world literatures today, and about how the structures of that writing shape our reading. The book’s eight chapters explore the ways in which postcolonial writing in English from various 21st-century contexts, including southern and West Africa, and Black and Asian Britain, interacts with our imaginative understanding of the world. Throughout, the focus is on reading practices, where reading is taken as an inventive, border-traversing activity, one that postcolonial writing with its interests in margins, intersections, subversions, and crossings specifically encourages. This close, sustained focus on reading, reception, and literariness is an outstanding feature of the study, as is its wide generic range, embracing poetry, essays, and life-writing, as well as fiction. The field-defining scholar Elleke Boehmer holds that literature has the capacity to keep reimagining and refreshing how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including resistance, reconciliation, survival after terror, and migration.

Samskara

Samskara
Author: U. R. Anantha Murthy
Publisher:
Total Pages: 174
Release: 1989
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780195610796

Made into a powerful, award-winning film in 1970, this important Kannada novel of the sixties has received widespread acclaim from both critics and general readers since its first publication in 1965. As a religious novel about a decaying brahmin colony in the south Indian village of Karnataka, Samskara serves as an allegory rich in realistic detail, a contemporary reworking of ancient Hindu themes and myths, and a serious, poetic study of a religious man living in a community of priests gone to seed. A death which stands as the central event in the plot brings in its wake a plague, many more deaths, live questions with only dead answers, moral chaos, and the rebirth of one man. The volume provides a useful glossary of Hindu myths, customs, Indian names, flora, and other terms. Notes and an afterword enhance the self-contained, faithful, and yet readable translation.

Anthills of the Savannah

Anthills of the Savannah
Author: Chinua Achebe
Publisher: Heinemann
Total Pages: 246
Release: 1988
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780435905385

Annotation Achebe writes of the old Africa and the new, tribal warfare and the war that goes on in people's hearts. His story takes place two years after a military coup in the mythical West African state of Kangan, and shows the transformation of a brilliant young.

The Empire Writes Back

The Empire Writes Back
Author: Bill Ashcroft
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2003-12-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113446505X

The experience of colonization and the challenges of a post-colonial world have produced an explosion of new writing in English. This diverse and powerful body of literature has established a specific practice of post-colonial writing in cultures as various as India, Australia, the West Indies and Canada, and has challenged both the traditional canon and dominant ideas of literature and culture. The Empire Writes Back was the first major theoretical account of a wide range of post-colonial texts and their relation to the larger issues of post-colonial culture, and remains one of the most significant works published in this field. The authors, three leading figures in post-colonial studies, open up debates about the interrelationships of post-colonial literatures, investigate the powerful forces acting on language in the post-colonial text, and show how these texts constitute a radical critique of Eurocentric notions of literature and language. This book is brilliant not only for its incisive analysis, but for its accessibility for readers new to the field. Now with an additional chapter and an updated bibliography, The Empire Writes Back is essential for contemporary post-colonial studies.