Transfigurations of the Maghreb

Sample

Donald R. Wehrs

"In his study of the origins of political reflection in twentieth-century African fiction, Donald Wehrs examines a neglected but import ant body of African texts written in colonial (English and French) and indigenous (Hausa and Yoruba) languages. He explores pioneering narrative representations of pre-colonial African history and society in seven texts: Casely Hayford's Ethiopia Unbound (1911), Alhaji Sir Abubaker Tafawa Balewa's Shaihu Umar (1934), Paul Hazoume's Doguicimi (1938), D.O. Fagunwa's Forest of a Thousand Daemons (1938), Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (1952) and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1954), and Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958). Wehrs highlights the role of pre-colonial political economies and articulations of state power on colonial-era considerations of ethical and political issues, and is attentive to the gendered implications of texts and authorial choices. By positioning Things Fall Apart as the culmination of a tradition, rather than as its inaugural work, he also reconfigures how we think of African Fiction. His book supplements recent work on the importance of indigenous contexts and discourses in situating colonial-era narratives and will inspire fresh methodological strategies for studying the continent from a multiplicity of perspectives."--Jacket.

Sample

Timothy Hampton

"Assessing the relationship between the emergence of modern French literary culture and the ideological debates that marked Renaissance France, Timothy Hampton explores the role of literary form in shaping national identity.". "The foundational texts of modern French literature were produced during a period of unprecedented struggle over the meaning of community. In the face of religious heresy, political threats from abroad, and new forms of cultural diversity, Renaissance French culture confronted, in new and urgent ways, the question of what it means to be "French." Hampton shows how conflicts between different concepts of community were mediated symbolically through the genesis of new literary forms. Hampton's analysis of works by Rabelais, Montaigne, Du Bellay, and Marguerite de Navarre, as well as writings by lesser-known poets, pamphleteers, and political philosophers, shows that the vulnerability of France and the instability of French identity were pervasive cultural themes during this period.". "Contemporary scholarship on nation-building in early modern Europe has emphasized the importance of centralized power and the rise of absolute monarchy. Hampton offers a counterargument, demonstrating that both community and national identity in Renaissance France were defined through a dialogic relationship to that which was not French - to the foreigner, the stranger, the intruder from abroad. He provides both a methodological challenge to traditional cultural history and a new consideration of the role of literature in the definition of the nation."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

John G. Cawelti, Bruce A. Rosenberg

Why has the spy story become such a popular form of entertainment in our time? In this fascinating account of the genre's evolution, John G. Cawelti and Bruce A. Rosenberg explore the social, political, and artistic sources of the spy story's wide appeal. They show how, in a time of bewildering political and corporate organization, the spy story has become increasingly relevant, the secret agent hero expressing the feelings of divided and ambiguous loyalties with which many individuals face the modern world. In addition to a general history of the genre, Cawelti and Rosenberg present in-depth analyses of the work of certain writers who have given the spy story its shape, among them John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, and John le Carré. The Spy Story also includes an extensive appendix, featuring a literary and historical bibliography of espionage and clandestinity, a list of the best spy novels and films, a catalog of major spy writers and their heroes, and a selection of novels on espionage themes written by major twentieth-century authors and public figures. Written in a lively style that reflects the authors' enthusiasm for this intriguing form, The Spy Story will be read with pleasure by devotees of the genre as well as students of popular culture.

Sample

Alexandra W. Schultheis

"In Regenerative Fiction, Alexandra W. Schultheis brings postcolonial and psychoanalytic theories together to explore this tumultuous zone, a place that is at once cutting edge, open wound, and sutured scar. This analysis of the authors' political and aesthetic strategies reveals fissures in the ruling ideology of subject and nation as well as immanent resistance to it."--Jacket.