Description
Book SynopsisThe re-issue of archival volumes ALT 1 to ALT 14 makes the complete series available and provides the historical perspective of these early contributions to the literature and its criticism.In this 10th anniversary volume, first published in 1979, Eldred Jones outlines the trend over the years since independence of "a greater degree of alienation or dissidence of the principal writers from established regimes and a movement towards a closer identification with what they see as the needs of the ordinary people. Writers increasingly found themselves in difficulties with their respective governments, with ensuing consequences of loss of favour,of exile - enforced or voluntary - or worse still of detention or imprisonment in their own countries." This issue makes a reassessment of African writing with special articles on novels, drama and poetry and particular studies ofthe work of Kofi Awoonor, Ngugi, Ezekiel Mphalele, Richard Rive, Cyprian Ekwensi, Ayi Kwei Armah, Yambo Ouologuem and Arthur Nortje.
Table of ContentsEditorial - Eldred Jones Issues in the reassessment of the African novel [Dan Izevbaye] Modern African poetry:The domestication of a tradition [D. I. Nwoga] Trends in African theatre [Michael Etherton] The missing link in African literature [Juliet I. Okonkwo] Influence & originality in African writing [Bu-Buakel Jabbi] A approach to Ouologuem's Le Devoir de Violence [A.E. Ohaegbu] Madness in the African novel: Awoonor's This Earth. My Brother [Femi Ojo-Ade] Ngugi's Petals of Blood [Eustace Palmer] Ngugi's Christian vision:Theme & pattern in A Grain of Wheat [Govind Narain Sharma] Popular literature in East Africa [Elizabeth Knight] South African hisotory, politics & literature: Mphalele's Down Second Avenue and Rive's Emergency [Okpure O. Obuke] The free spirit of Ekwensi's Jagua Nana [Lorett A. Hawkins] Dialectic as form:Pejorism in the novels of Armah [Charles E. Nnolim] Nortje:Poet at work [R.G. Leitch] Two poems by Nortje [with a note by Dennis Brutus] Poetry of the last five years [Clive Wake] Reviews include Sipho Sepamla's The Soweto I Love & Kenneth Ramchand's An Introduction to the Study of West Indian Literature
