Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in the History of African Literature: A Critical Analysis of a Landmark Novel
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47963/jla.v2i1.111Keywords:
break, autonomy, literary field, symbolism, ambivalence, tensionsAbstract
This study shows the central position held by Ayi Kwei Aramh’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born in the African literary world. It tries to prove that the publishing of this work was a landmark in the early post-colonial context of African literature. Through a series of breaks from still prevailing colonial and neocolonial literary discourses, it has initiated an innovative aesthetics which has left a tremendous legacy which is being continued by subsequent generations.
Downloads
References
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart, London, Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1958.
---. Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. London, Heinemann 1975.
Armah, Ayi Kwei. The Resolutionaries, Popenguine, Per Ankh, 2013.
---. Remembering the Dismembered Continent, Popenguine, Per Ankh, 2010.
---. KMT: In The House of Life, Popenguine, Per Ankh, 2002.
---. Osiris Rising, Popenguine, Per Ankh, 1995.
---. The Healers, Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1979.
---. Two Thousand Seasons, Popenguine, Per Ankh, 1973.
---. Why Are We So Blest? London, Heinemann, 1974.
---. Fragments, London, Heinemann, 1974.
---. The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, London, Heinemann, 1968.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures. New York, Routledge, 2003.
Ball, Clement. Satire and the Postcolonial Novel, New York, Routledge, 2003.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art. Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, Trans. Susan Emanuel, Stanford University Press, 1995.
Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters, Trans. M.B. Debevoise, Cambridge, Havard University Press, 2004.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. University of Minnesota Press, 1982.
Nwolin, Charles. Dialectic as From: Pejorism in the Novels of Armah. African Literature Today: Retrospect and Prospect, London, Heinemann, 1979.
Okara, Gabriel. The Voice, New York, Pearson Education, 1970.
Robert, Stéphane. Structure et sémantique de la focalisation. Bulletin de la Société de Linguistique de Paris, 1993, 25-47.
Rushdie, Salman. Outside the Whale, Cambridge, Granta, 1984.
Selassi, Taye. Stop Pigeonholing African Writers, The Guardian 2018. Retrieved from URL https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/04/taiye-selasi-stop-pigeonholing-african-writers
Singh, Rashna Batliwala. African Literature and the Next Generation of Writing Back. Africa in Words Guests, 6th February 2017. Retrieved from URL
https://africainwords.com/2017/02/06/african-literature-and-the-next-generation-of-writing-back/
Thiong’o wa Ngugi. A Grain of Wheat, Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1971.
---. Writers in Politics, Nairobi, Heinemann, 1981.
Whyte, Philip. L’imaginaire dans l’écriture d’Ayi Kwei Armah. L’évolution d’une forme. A la recherche d’une forme. Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003.
Wright, Derek. Critical Perspectives on Ayi Kwei Armah, Connecticut, Three Continents Press, 1992.
