Cambridge History Of African And Caribbean Literature, The

Description: The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature Two Volume Hardback Set
Description: This history offers new perspectives on African and Caribbean literature. It provides the general coverage and specific information expected of a major history. Chapters address the literature itself, the practices and conditions of its composition, and its complex relationship with African social and geopolitical history. The book provides an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise the field of African literature, defined both by imaginative expression in Africa itself and the black diaspora. The book accounts for the specific historical and cultural context in which this expression has been manifested in African and the Caribbean: the formal particularities of the literary corpus, both oral and written, that can be ascribed to the two areas, and the diversity of material and texts covered by the representative works. This magisterial history of African literature is an essential resource for specialists and students.
Review: '... begins with some excellent essays on how African societies have shaped the oral culture from which they emerged.' Times Literary Supplement '... readers will find here valuable individual essays, well edited and handsomely presented.' New West Indian Guide
Contents: Preface; Acknowledgments; Maps; Chronology; 1. Africa and orality Liz Gunner; 2. The folk tale and its extensions Kwesi Yankah; 3. Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa Tejumola Oaniyan; 4. Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa Sabra Webber; 5. Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa Lupenga Mphande; 6. African oral epics Isidore Okpehwo; 7. The oral tradition in the African diaspora Maureen Warner-Lewis; 8. Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama Keith Q. Warner; 9. Africa and writing Alain Ricard; 10. Ethiopian literature Teodros Kiros; 11. African literature in Arabic Farida Abu-Haidar; 12. The Swahili literary tradition: and intercultural heritage Alamin Mazrui; 13. Africa and the European Renaissance Silvie Kande; 14. The literature of slavery and abolition Moira Ferguson; 15. Discourses of empire Robert Eric Livingston; 16. African-language literatures of Southern Africa Daniel P. Kuene; 17. Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngugi's later novels Ann Biersteker; 18. The emergence of written Hausa literature Ausseina Alidou; 19. Literature in Yoruba: poetry and prose; traveling theatre and modern drama Karin Barber; 20. African literature and the colonial factor Simon Gikandi; 21. The formative journals and institutions Milton Krieger; 22. Literature in Afrikaans Ampie Coetzee; 23. East African literature in English Simon Gikandi; 24. Anglophone literature of Central Africa Flora Veit-Wild and Anthony Chennells; 25. West African literature in English: beginnings to the mid-seventies Dan Izebaye; 26. South African literature in English David Attwell; 27. African literature in French: Sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period Mildred Mortimer; 28. North African literature in French Patricia Geesey; 29. Francophone literatures of the Indian Ocean Benedicte Maguiere; 30. African literature in Spanish Mabre Ngom; 31. African literature in Portuguese Russell Hamilton; 32. Popular literature in Africa Ode S. Ogede; 33. Caribbean literature in French: origins and development Nick Nesbitt; 34. Caribbean literature in Spanish Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert; 35. Anglophone Caribbean literature Elaine Savory; 36. The Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude Movement F. Abiola Irele; 37. Postcolonial Caribbean identities J. Michael Dash; 38. African literature and post independence disillusionment Derek Wright; 39. 'Postcolonial' African and Caribbean literature Adele King; 40. Modernism and postmodernism in African literature Ato Quayson.
Author Biography: Professor F. Abiola Irele's publications include an annotated edition of Selected Poems of Leopold Sedar Senghor (1977), The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (1981; reprinted 1990), and an annotated edition of Aime Cesaire's Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (1994; second edition 1999), as well as numerous articles and reviews and a recent volume of essays, The African Imagination (2001). He is a contributing editor to the new Norton Anthology of World Literature and is currently editor of Research in African Literatures. He is general editor of the series Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature. SIMON GIKANDI is Robert Hayden Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His books include Reading the African Novel, Reading Chinua Achebe, Writing in Limbo: Modernism and Caribbean Literature, Maps of Englishness: Writing Identity in the Culture of Colonialism, and Ngugi wa Thiong'o. He is the general editor of The Encyclopedia of African Literature.