Dr Donald R Wehrs's Books

Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives

From Ethiopia Unbound to Things Fall Apart, 1911–1958

By: Dr Donald R Wehrs

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Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives

From Ethiopia Unbound to Things Fall Apart, 1911–1958

By: Dr Donald R Wehrs

In his study of the origins of political reflection in twentieth-century African fiction, Donald Wehrs examines a neglected but important body of African texts written in colonial (English and French) and indigenous (Hausa and Yoruba) languages. He explores pioneering narrative representations of pre-colonial African history and society in seven texts: Casely Hayford's Ethiopia Unbound (1911), Alhaji Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa's Shaihu Umar (1934), Paul Hazoumé's Doguicimi (1938), D.O. Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Daemons (1938), Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954), and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958). Wehrs highlights the role of pre-colonial political economies and articulations of state power on colonial-era considerations of ethical and political issues, and is attentive to the gendered implications of texts and authorial choices. By positioning Things Fall Apart as the culmination of a tradition, rather than as its inaugural work, he also reconfigures how we think of African fiction. His book supplements recent work on the importance of indigenous contexts and discourses in situating colonial-era narratives and will inspire fresh methodological strategies for studying the continent from a multiplicity of perspectives.

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Page Count

214

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

140947495X

ISBN 13

9781409474951

J.M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship

By: Dr Jane Poyner

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J.M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship

By: Dr Jane Poyner

In her analysis of the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee's literary and intellectual career, Jane Poyner illuminates the author's abiding preoccupation with what Poyner calls the "paradox of postcolonial authorship". Writers of conscience or conscience-stricken writers of the kind Coetzee portrays, whilst striving symbolically to bring the stories of the marginal and the oppressed to light, always risk reimposing the very authority they seek to challenge. From Dusklands to Diary of a Bad Year, Poyner traces how Coetzee rehearses and revises his understanding of the ethics of intellectualism in parallel with the emergence of the "new South Africa". She contends that Coetzee's modernist aesthetics facilitate a more exacting critique of the problems that encumber postcolonial authorship, including the authority it necessarily engenders. Poyner is attentive to the ways Coetzee's writing addresses the writer's proper role with respect to the changing ethical demands of contemporary political life. Theoretically sophisticated and accessible, her book is a major contribution to our understanding of the Nobel Laureate and to postcolonial studies.

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Page Count

252

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475522

ISBN 13

9781409475521

Spatial Politics in the Postcolonial Novel

By: Dr Sara Upstone

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Spatial Politics in the Postcolonial Novel

By: Dr Sara Upstone

In her innovative study of spatial locations in postcolonial texts, Sara Upstone adopts a transnational and comparative approach that challenges the tendency to engage with authors in isolation or in relation to other writers from a single geographical setting. Suggesting that isolating authors in terms of geography reinforces the primacy of the nation, Upstone instead illuminates the power of spatial locales such as the journey, city, home, and body to enable personal or communal statements of resistance against colonial prejudice and its neo-colonial legacies. While focusing on the major texts of Wilson Harris, Toni Morrison, and Salman Rushdie in relation to particular spatial locations, Upstone offers a wide range of examples from other postcolonial authors, including Michael Ondaatje, Keri Hulme, J. M. Coetzee, Arundhati Roy, Tsitsi Dangarembga, and Abdulrazak Gurnah. The result is a strong case for what Upstone terms the 'postcolonial spatial imagination', independent of geography though always fully contextualised. Written in accessible and unhurried prose, Upstone's study is marked by its respect for the ways in which the writers themselves resist not only geographical boundaries but academic categorisation.

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Page Count

232

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409475212

ISBN 13

9781409475217

Book's by Dr Donald R Wehrs

Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives

Pre-Colonial Africa in Colonial African Narratives

J.M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship

J.M. Coetzee and the Paradox of Postcolonial Authorship

Spatial Politics in the Postcolonial Novel

Spatial Politics in the Postcolonial Novel

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