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...

This study draws together the disparate fields of postcolonial theory and book history. Fraser illustrates his combined approach with comparative case studies of print, script and speech cultures in South Asia and Africa.

Robert Fraser stresses the conciliating force of Ben Okri's writing and his vision of an ideal community beyond the strife-ridden present. This is the first ever full-length study of Ben Okri's life and work based on twenty years of friendship and close attention to his texts. It argues that his writing is best appreciated against the background of his early exposure to the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70) and his attempts since then to forge a medium of conciliation through literature. We live by stories, Okri once wrote, We also live in them. Following him from Lagos to London and from...

Late Victorian quest romance has recently at tracted critical attention, often relating to politics of ge nder and its vision of Empire. In this study the genre is vi ewed in the light of contemporary debates in anthropology an d archaeology. '