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English Language and Literature Commons

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Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Fiction

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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Oligarchy And Orature In The Novels Of Nuruddin Farah, Derek Wright Jan 1991

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, …


Nadine Gordimer: The White Artist As A Sport Of Nature, Barbara Temple-Thurston Jan 1991

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. …