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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Oligarchy And Orature In The Novels Of Nuruddin Farah, Derek Wright
Oligarchy And Orature In The Novels Of Nuruddin Farah, Derek Wright
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
In Farah's fiction Somali oral traditions are shown to possess a resilient strength and even a revolutionary vitality. Yet they are not envisaged polemically, as unsullied alternatives and sources of counter-discourse to post-colonial realities: rather, they are shown to be implicated in their evils and corruptions. Faced with a mode of reality built on oral discourse, where the written word is ruthlessly suppressed, written texts either retreat into secret cipher or are themselves infiltrated by the vaporous oral reality of public life and take on selected elements of oral literary conventions: notably, their fluid indeterminacy of meaning and interpretative openness, …
The Political Alienation Of The Intellectual In Recent Zairian Fiction, Janice Spleth
The Political Alienation Of The Intellectual In Recent Zairian Fiction, Janice Spleth
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
A high proportion of recent Zairian fiction features intellectuals—educators, priests, students, and professionals—as major characters who are in some way alienated from society. This study documents the extent of this occurrence in novels by Mbwil a Mpang Ngal, V. Y. Mudimbe, Bolya Baenga, and Pius Ngandu Nkashama and, at the same time, relates the situation of the intellectual as seen in these works to some of the social and political factors peculiar to Zaire's colonial history and post-independence evolution. Analyses of individual novels provide the basis for a discussion of Belgian colonial policies regarding the évolué, the ambiguous role …
Nadine Gordimer: The White Artist As A Sport Of Nature, Barbara Temple-Thurston
Nadine Gordimer: The White Artist As A Sport Of Nature, Barbara Temple-Thurston
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This article applies principles of new historicism to show that A Sport of Nature can be read as Gordimer's attempt to persuade South African artists to reject mere protest art and to shift art beyond the trap of oppositional forces in South Africa's history today. The text calls instead—via fiction and the imagination—for a new post-apartheid art that will generate creative possibilities for a future South Africa. Gordimer's protagonist, Hillela Capran, is read as a metaphor for the white South African artist who, like Hillela, struggles for an authentic identity and meaningful role in the evolving history of South Africa. …