The African Imagination Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora [Paperback]

This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an African imagination manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora.The African Imaginationincludes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampat? B?, and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.

1. The African Imagination
2. Orality, Literacy, and African Literature
3. African Letters: The Making of a Tradition
4. Dimensions of African Discourse
5. A Study in Ambiguity: Amadou Hampat? B?'sThe Fortunes of Wangrin
6. Narrative, History and the African Imagination: Amadou Kourouma'sMonn?, outrages et d?fis
7. The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebe'sThings Fall Apart
8. The Return of the Native: Edward Kamau Brathwaite'sMasks
9. A National Voice: The Poetry and Plays of John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo
10. Parables of the African Condition: The New Realism in African Fiction
Notes
Bibliography
Index

An interesting collection of essays...Well worth the reading time. --African Studies Review

Abiola Irele is not only one of the most prominent African critics writing today, but an intellectual figure of commanding importance in an international frame. No one has a subtler appreciation of Africa's present-day cultural complexities. No one has a deeper understanding of the role olÓw