Nigeria's Third-Generation Literature

Content and Form
1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-032-26842-2
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 326 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 655 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in African Literature

This book considers the evolution and characteristics of Nigeria’s third-generation literature, which emerged between the late 1980s and the early 1990s and is marked by expressive modes and concerns distinctly different from those of the preceding era.

The creative writing of this period reflects new sensibilities and anxieties about Nigeria’s changing fortunes in the post-colonial era. The literature of the third generation is startling in its candidness, irreverence as well as the brutal self-disclosure of its characters, and it is governed by an unusually wide-ranging sweep in narrative techniques. This book examines six key texts of the oeuvre: Maria Ajima’s The Web, Okey Ndibe’s Foreign Gods, Inc., Teju Cole’s Open City, Chika Unigwe’s On Black Sisters Street, Lola Shoneyin’s The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck. The texts interpret contemporary corruption and other unspeakable social malaise; together, they point to the exciting future of Nigerian literature, which has always been defined by its daring creativity and inventive expressive modes. Even conventional storytelling strategies receive revitalizing energies in these angst-driven narratives.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers of contemporary African literature, Sociology, Gender and women’s studies, and post-colonial cultural expression more broadly.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Zielgruppe

Academic, Postgraduate, and Undergraduate Advanced

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ogede, Ode

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Historische & Regionale Volkskunde
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Strömungen & Epochen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Afrikanische Literaturen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Tables of Contents 1. New Wines and Old and New Bottles 2. Parable, Metaphor, the Pictorial Frame, Emblem of Moral Decadence 3. Allegory, Migration, Mock-Epic, and Unspeakable Subjects 4. Elegy, Prose Narrative, and the Inner Life 5. Subverted Narrative of Disappointed Expectations 6. Ethnography, Patriarchy (or Male Dominance), Anecdotal Portraiture, and the Unspeakable Subject of Co-Wife Rivalry, or the Dilemma of the Western Educated Woman within Polygyny 7. Anecdote, Allegory, and the Pictorial Frame 8. Signing Off/Out Index

Über Autor(innen)

Ode Ogede is Former Vice-President of the Modern Language Association of Nigeria and is currently Professor of English at North Carolina Central University, USA, as well as author of several books.