Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> African

"This is a cogent analysis of the complexities of gender in the work of nine contemporary Anglophone and Francophone novelists.... offers illuminating interpretations of worthy writers... " --Multicultural Review

"This book reaffirms Bessie Head's remark that books are a tool, in this case a tool that allows readers to understand better the rich lives and the condition of African women. Excellent notes and a rich bibliography." --Choice

..". a college-level analysis which will appeal to any interested in African studies and literature." --The Bookwatch

This book applies...

..". a book that will break new ground in African cultural studies.... it] will appeal not only to literary scholars but also to social historians and cultural anthropologists." Karin Barber

Focusing on the broad educational aims of the colonial administration and missionary societies, Stephanie Newell draws on newspaper archives, early unofficial texts, and popular sources to uncover how Africans used literacy to carve out new cultural, social, and economic spaces for themselves. Newly literate Africans not only shaped literary tastes in colonial Africa but also influenced how and...

"Dried millet breaking," sung by the bard at the end of one episode of this Woi epic of the Kpelle people of Liberia, represents a formula that breaks the flow of events and introduces the epic's complex temporal scaffolding. Examining the singing, narration, dramatic performance, instrumental accompaniment, and timing of the Woi epic, Ruth M. Stone reveals that the Kpelle show time flux through changing timbres, motion, and spatial metaphors in ways fundamentally different from those of much Western art music. In this illuminating study Stone moves beyond typical genre studies of African...

Stephen C. Meyer details the intricate relationships between the operas Der Freischutz and Euryanthe, and contemporary discourse on both the "Germany of the imagination" and the new nation itself. In so doing, he presents excerpts from a wide range of philosophical, political, and musical writings, many of which are little known and otherwise unavailable in English. Individual chapters trace the multidimensional concept of German and "foreign" opera through the 19th century. Meyer's study of Der Freischutz places the work within the context of emerging German nationalism, and a chapter on...

"Quite simply: these are seminal essays.... Distinguished scholarship, erudite, and full of innovative ways of interpreting Arabic and Persian poetry." --Omar Pound

" This book] reads Arabic and Persian poetry in a refreshingly new and significant way.... raises our understanding... to a new level." --James T. Monroe

Innovative methodologies reorient critical readings of classical Middle Eastern literature.

"A struggle between two memories" is how Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish describes the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Within this struggle, the meanings of land and home have been challenged and questioned, so that even heaps of stones become points of contention. Are they proof of ancient Hebrew settlement, or rubble from a bulldozed Palestinian village? The memory of these stones, and of the land itself, is nurtured and maintained in Palestinian writing and other modes of expression, which are used to confront and counter Israeli images and rhetoric. This struggle provides a...

In November 1988 Naguib Mahfouz became the first Arab writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. In this study of his writings only now being widely translated into English, Haim Gordon, an Israeli professor committed to intercultural dialogue, examines Mahfouz's work from an existential perspective. While Mahfouz is first and foremost a storyteller, he gives the reader an extra baksheesh. By telling stories of persons from all walks of life--civil servants, peasants, pimps, lawyers, and businessmen--Mahfouz depicts the existential problems that Egyptians face today. Using a Socratic...

In this first full-length study of Emecheta's fiction, Fishburn highlights the difficulties inherent in reading across cultures. She challenges the notion that all we need to understand African texts is a willingness to be open to them, arguing that too many of the cultural and critical preconceptions we bring to these texts interfere with our ability to understand them. Directly responding to Western feminist criticism written about Emecheta, this study argues that Emecheta herself is not a feminist in the Western sense and that her novels should not be construed as reflecting this...

Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country" is one of the most influential works of South African literature. Appearing at a time when the South African political system was being increasingly questioned, the novel drew worldwide attention to the horrors of apartheid, a political institution promoting segregation and discrimination. This book overviews Paton's novel and its social and political contexts. It discusses South African history and provides a sample of documents related to the origin of apartheid and the challenges facing South Africans under the segregationist regime. In doing so,...

African literature is a vast subject of growing output and interest. Written especially for students, this book selectively surveys the topic in a clear and accessible way. Included are roughly 600 alphabetically arranged entries on writers, genres, and major works. Many entries cite works for further reading, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.

Africa is a land of contrasts and of diverse cultures and traditions. It is also a land of conflict and creativity. The literature of the continent draws upon a fascinating body of oral traditions and lore and also...

Internationally celebrated for her novels, Nadine Gordimer has devoted much of her life and fiction to the political struggles of the Third World, the New World, and her native South Africa. Living in Hope and History is an on-the-spot record of her years as a public figure--an observer of apartheid and its aftermath, a member of the ANC, and the champion of dissident writers everywhere.

In a letter to fellow Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe, Nadine Gordimer describes Living in Hope and History as a "modest book of some of the nonfiction pieces I've written, a reflection of...

Medieval Andalusian Courtly Culture discusses the unicum manuscript of the Hadith Bayad wa Riyad, the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived for more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arabic-speaking presence in present-day Spain. The manuscript is of paramount importance as it contains the only known surviving version, both in terms of text and of image, of the love story of Bayad wa Riyad.

This study will place this manuscript within the context of late medieval Mediterranean courtly culture, offering:

• an annotated translation into...

Made up of a number of seminal articles that are translated for the first time in English, this prestigious book from Gregor Schoeler gives a reasoned, informed and comprehensive overflow of how the written and the spoken interacted, diverged and received cultural articulation among the Muslim societies of the first two centuries of the Hijra.

The writer and politician Mahmud al-Mis'adi is a figure of prime importance in the development of North African literature and cultural politics since the last war. This fascinating book covers both his essays and fiction, written between the 1930s and 1990s, which challenge the boundaries between the sacred and irreligious in the Islamic world. In addition, it also examines Arabic literature and its relationship to the West.