Tag: Dissertation Work
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Isidore Okpewho’s Myth in Africa (1983)
Some more Okpewho for you today…no introduction needed… Myth in Africa Isidore Okpewho London: Cambridge, 1983 Preface: Here, Okpewho takes the opportunity to drive in the point that he concentrated on in the previous work The Epic in Africa (1979), which is that the practices of oral literature are not solely related to religious ritual. […]
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Isidore Okpewho’s The Epic in Africa (1979)
After a fair bit of study during my undergrad and MA (the latter with Harold Scheub who has recently retired), I had almost entirely forgotten the fascinating body of work dedicated to African oral literature. Oral? Literature? Did I hear you right? Yes. Yes you did. Because despite not being written down, this rich body of tales, […]
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Maryse Condé, desire, return
If you’re familiar with Guadeloupian writer Maryse Condé, you might also be familiar with the striking similarities between the female protagonists in both En attendant le Bonheur (originally published as Heremakhonon, 1976) and Histoire de la femme cannibale (2005). Both Véronica of the former title and Rosélie of the latter travel an uprooted Pan-African non-trajectory, originally […]
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so…should prosper mérimée be considered an abolitionist writer or not?
You’ve probably read Christopher L. Miller’s The French Atlantic Triangle, yes? (No, you are NOT a francophone African/Caribbean literature scholar, you say? You stumbled onto this blog because you heard there’d be cake? There is cake too. There is definitely cake.) The book is taking me all summer to read. But not in the bad […]
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the local is not the national; the national is not the local
I’ve been reading quite a smart book lately that engages a question running through African literary theory, which could essentially be summed up as “How useful is the nation as the principle structuring concept of the African imaginary?” The nation was the most important structuring concept during the period of independence from colonial powers and […]
Indirect Libre 