Theme and Style in African Poetry

Theme and Style in African Poetry
Author: Isaac Irabor Elimimian
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 1991
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

A critical study which explores the range and content of African verse. The text embraces oral poetry and francophone verse.

Tasks and Masks

Tasks and Masks
Author: Lewis Nkosi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 222
Release: 1981
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

Ideology & Form in African Poetry

Ideology & Form in African Poetry
Author: Emmanuel Ngara
Publisher: Heinemann Educational Publishers
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1990
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Emmanuel Ngara evaluates the ability of poets to communicate with their readers. His two studies of style and ideology in novels from Africa have made a considerable impact. He has now used the same technique to help students come to terms with the demanding question of poetic style. -- From back cover

The New African Poetry

The New African Poetry
Author: Tanure Ojaide
Publisher: Three Continents
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2000
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780894108914

This anthology presents the voices of a new generation of African poets, drawn from across the continent and representing a wide range of themes, styles and ideologies. These contemporary voices have been shaped in the realities of postcolonial Africa from the mid-1970s to the end of the 1990s.

Oral Literature in Africa

Oral Literature in Africa
Author: Ruth Finnegan
Publisher: Open Book Publishers
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2012-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1906924708

Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

Oral & Written Poetry in African Literature Today

Oral & Written Poetry in African Literature Today
Author: Eldred D. Jones
Publisher: James Currey Publishers
Total Pages: 176
Release: 1988
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN:

The contemporary poet in Africa is continuing a long tradition of poetry which in many places pre-dated the advent of writing. North America: Africa World Press

West African Poetry

West African Poetry
Author: Robert Fraser
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 1986-09-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521312233

Previous studies of African poetry have tended to concentrate either on its political content or on its relationship to various European schools. This book examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Do the roots of such poetry lie in Africa or in Europe? In committing their work to writing, do poets lose more than they gain? Can the immediacy of oral performance ever be recovered? Robert Fraser's account of two centuries of West African verse examines its subjugation to a succession of international styles: from the heroic couplet to the austerity of experimental Modernism. Successive chapters take us through the Négritude movement and the emergence of anglophone free verse in the 1950s to the rediscovery in recent years of the neglected springs of orality, which is the subject of the concluding chapter.

Cow Republic

Cow Republic
Author: Anthony Michael
Publisher:
Total Pages: 79
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre:
ISBN:

Cow Republic introduces a personal voice which explores the interplays between traditional formalism and contemporary styles and themes. The collection features themes of the African experience, as well as the clash between the modern and traditional worlds, as references to Google and Coca-Cola appear alongside stories involving the violence of slavery or industry against traditional cultures. Some of the poems which most prominently display these features combine form and content in ways that are traditional but at the same time present intriguing avenues for exploration of what it means to come from a place that is at once historic and contemporary, beautiful and ugly. While typically simple on the surface in terms of structures, narratives, and diction, many of the poems are far more complex than they might initially appear. Flexibility with styles and technique do not interfere with the poetic voice, which remains constant throughout. The subtleties of theme and variation in content and style in poems such as "Nigeria for Sale", "Wake Up Africa", and "Who Are They?" should not be mistaken for lack of imagination, but rather viewed as a sensitive and clever manipulation of stanza, diction, and theme to express ideas that are both highly personal and emotional, and also visual and global. Straightforward yet thought-provoking, with a style at the same time minimalist and complex, this collection offers its reader a dynamic experience, shifting between emotions, values, and cultures, all the while maintaining the integrity of the poetic voice and meaning.

The Poetic Aesthetics of African Poetry

The Poetic Aesthetics of African Poetry
Author: Adebayo Albert
Publisher: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2014-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9783659120572

There has not been any thorough stylistic study of Ademola Dasylva's Songs of Odamolugbe and Raji-Oyelade's A Harvest of Laughters. Neither has there been a comparative analysis of the two texts. The present study aims to fill the gap in knowledge by examining the elements of African oral poetic tradition that could be found in the two volumes of poetry. It discusses the thematic and stylistic similarities and differences discoverable in the poems. The methodology adopted for this study is primary research in which the texts are closely read and vigorously analysed using Black aesthetic theory. Materials are sourced from conference papers, textbooks, magazines and the Internet. A detailed elucidation of Dasylva's Songs of Odamolugbe and Raji-Oyelade's A Harvest of Laughters using such African poetic aesthetic yardsticks as language, universality, style, theme, African folklore, African concepts of time and space, African concepts of order and justice, African mystical life, the motif of African cultural defence, the motif of social cohesion, ethical and utilitarian functions of African poetry was carried out.