000			03334pam a2200349 a 4500
001			16723182
003			UkMaC
005			20211201144848.0
008			930409s1994 nhua b 001 0 eng
010			_a93013478
015			_aGB94-20267
020			_a0435080822 (Heinemann : acidfree paper)
020			_a0852555326 (James Currey : acidfree paper)
035			_a(WIBaU)b13305189-44whelf_bang
035			_a(OCoLC)28066991
035			_a(WlBaU)991001637399702422
043			_af------
050	0	0	_aPQ3980
082	0	0	_a809/.8896
245	0	0	_aThresholds of change in African literature : _bthe emergence of a tradition / _c[edited by] Kenneth W. Harrow.
260			_aPortsmouth, NH : _bHeinemann ; _aLondon : _bJames Currey, _cc1994.
300			_axiv, 384 p. : _bill. ; _c22 cm.
440		0	_aStudies in African literature.
504			_aIncludes bibliographical references (p. 363-370) and index.
520			_aAfrican literature in the twentieth century has grown from the early poetry of Negritude to recent novels of magical realism. As novelists, poets, and playwrights testified to the unique qualities of their lives and societies, a new tradition began to emerge. Novels of testimony, novels of revolt, novels of struggle, followed by postcolonial writings filled with complexities and ambiguities, have created a literary tradition expressive of the African spirit - a tradition influenced by earlier African oral literature, by European writings, by changing social conditions, and increasingly by Africa in writings themselves. Thresholds of Change in African Literature is interested in the emergence of this tradition and particularly in the ways in which the emergent literature underwent change at each critical stage. The dynamics of literary change are investigated, following the theoretical formulations of the Russian Formalists, Thomas Kuhn, and Jacques Derrida. A model of African literature is elaborated, addressing first the critical issue of change itself: the ways change comes about in literature, especially in a body of works that belong to a common tradition; the ways texts represent the process of change and thus suggest models for their own relationships to other works; and the form African literature assumes as a written tradition emerges. The keys to the formation of that tradition lie in the thresholds of change. These thresholds are found in the works discussed in Thresholds of Change. Included are analyses of works by the first generation of novelists in the 1950s and early 1960s that form the literature of temoignage, a literature that bears witness to individual lives and to social, cultural, and historical realities. There follows a study of the period from the 1960s to the 1990s that saw changes in the main trends, giving rise to new "literatures of revolt" and eventually to literatures expressive of postindependence contradictions and frustrations - "literatures of the oxymoron" or "postrevolt" writing.
650		0	_aAfrican literature (French) _xHistory and criticism.
650		0	_aAfrican literature (English) _xHistory and criticism.
650		0	_aInfluence (Literary, artistic, etc.)
700	1		_aHarrow, Kenneth W.
999			_c64271 _d64271