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  3. Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature

Each volume in this unique series of critical studies offers a comprehensive, up-to-date account of the whole oeuvre of an African or Caribbean writer. The main focus of attention is the works themselves - their significant themes, governing ideas and formal procedures. Biographical and other background information is presented secondarily, to illuminate these aspects of the writer's work where necessary.

  • General Editors: Abiola Irele, Ohio State University

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10 results in Cambridge Studies in African and Caribbean Literature

Nadine Gordimer
  • Dominic Head
  • Published online:
    05 July 2011
    Print publication:
    10 November 1994
  • The award to Nadine Gordimer of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991 was an affirmation of her distinctive contribution to twentieth-century fiction and to the creation of a literature that challenges apartheid. In this study, which may be used as an introduction as well as by those already familiar with Gordimer's work, Dominic Head discusses each of her novels in detail, paying close attention to the texts both as a reflection of events and situations in the real world, and as evidence of her constant rethinking of her craft. Head shows how Gordimer's concerns, apparent in her earliest novels, are developed through increasing stress on the politics of textuality; and he pursues the implications of this development to consider how Gordimer's later work contributes to postmodernist fiction, and to a recentering of political engagement in an era of uncertainty.

Chinua Achebe
  • Catherine Lynnette Innes
  • Published online:
    04 April 2011
    Print publication:
    23 February 1990
  • This book provides a detailed examination of the writings of Chinua Achebe, Africa's best-known and most widely-read author, shortlisted for the 1987 Booker Prize. Dr Innes studies his writings, lectures and activities chronologically, in the context of Nigerian culture and politics and their interaction with Western cultures and powers. Her analysis goes beyond that of previously published studies, to examine Achebe's short stories, essays and poetry, and his most recent publications, Anthills of the Savannah (1987) and Hopes and Impediments (1988). Particular emphasis is placed on Achebe's departure from European literary models to create a new kind of fiction which seeks to challenge the preconceptions of African and Western audiences alike, and which is of considerable literary and political significance. This study will be invaluable to readers of Achebe and to students and teachers of African literature and politics, and modern fiction.

J. M. Coetzee
  • Dominic Head
  • Published online:
    01 March 2010
    Print publication:
    29 January 1998
  • The importance of J. M. Coetzee in the development of twentieth-century fiction is widely recognised. His work addresses some of the key issues of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the relationship between postmodernism and postcolonialism, the role of history in the novel, and the question of how the author can combine an ethical and political consciousness with a commitment to the novel as a work of fiction. In this study, written in 1998, Dominic Head assesses Coetzee's position as a white South African writer engaged with the legacy of colonialism. Through close readings of all the novels, Head shows how Coetzee inhabits a transitional site between Europe and Africa, and it is from this position that his more general concerns emerge. Coetzee's engagement with the problems facing the postcolonial writer, Head argues, is always enriched by his awareness of a wider literary tradition.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o
  • Simon Gikandi
  • Published online:
    09 February 2010
    Print publication:
    11 May 2000
  • Kenyan dramatist and novelist Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a hugely influential African writer respected not only for his creative work but also for his criticism of wider cultural issues - issues such as nation and narration, power and performance, language and identity, empire and postcoloniality. Simon Gikandi's study, first published in 2000, offers a comprehensive analysis of all Ngugi's published work and explores the development of the major novels and plays against a background of colonialism and decolonisation in Kenya. Gikandi places the works in a context that examines the way they engage with the changing history of Africa. Tracing Ngugi's career from the 1960s through to his role in shaping a radical culture in East Africa in the 1970s and his imprisonment and exile in the 1980s, this book provides fresh insight into the author's life and the historic events that produced his work.

V. S. Naipaul
  • Fawzia Mustafa
  • Published online:
    06 January 2010
    Print publication:
    07 September 1995
  • This introductory study offers a critical overview of the major works of V. S. Naipaul from 1950 to the present day. Professor Mustafa's main concern is with literary issues, but historical, political and cultural questions are also addressed, with comparative references to other postcolonial works. Paradoxically, a major segment of Naipaul's non-western, pro-decolonisation readership seized on negative elements in his thinking, while Western reaction to his ideas and themes led to set notions about Third-World society. Thus, his work has always been the object of radically divergent views, dependent on the perspective of the reader. In examining this issue, Mustafa introduces general debates about postcolonial literary production and its contemporary interrogation of narrative techniques, language, gender, race, and canon formulation.

Aimé Césaire
  • Gregson Davis
  • Published online:
    29 October 2009
    Print publication:
    16 October 1997
  • Aimé Césaire is arguably the best-known poet in the French Caribbean. His poetry and drama have established his formidable reputation as the leading francophone poet and elder statesman of the twentieth century. In this study Gregson Davis examines the evolution of Césaire's poetic career and his involvement with many of the most seminal political and aesthetic movements of the twentieth century. Davis relates Césaire's extraordinary dual career as writer and elected politician to the recurrent themes in his writings. As one of the most profound critics of colonialism, Césaire, the acknowledged inventor of the famous term 'negritude', has been a hugely influential figure in shaping the contemporary discourse on the postcolonial predicament. Gregson Davis's account of Césaire's intellectual growth is grounded in a careful reading of the poetry, prose and drama that illustrates the full range and depth of his literary achievement.

Edouard Glissant
  • J. Michael Dash
  • Published online:
    29 September 2009
    Print publication:
    24 February 1995
  • Edouard Glissant is an accomplished and influential novelist and poet, and has recently emerged as a major theorist in Caribbean studies and post-colonial literature. In this first full-length study of Glissant's creative and theoretical work J. Michael Dash examines his poems, novels, plays and essays in the context of modern French literary movements and the post-negritude Caribbean situation, providing both a useful introduction to, and a challenging assessment of, Glissant's work to date. Dash shows how Glissant has focused in an unprecedented way on the Caribbean in terms of the diverse and hybrid culture that has been created in the region, and how his ideas on a cross-cultural politics are the shaping force in the francophone Caribbean 'Creolite' movement.

Derek Walcott
  • Edward Baugh
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    09 March 2006
  • Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is one of the Caribbean's most famous writers. His unique voice in poetry, drama and criticism is shaped by his position at the crossroads between Caribbean, British and American culture and by his interest in hybrid identities and diaspora. Edward Baugh's Derek Walcott analyses and evaluates Walcott's entire career over the last fifty years. Baugh guides the reader through the continuities and differences of theme and style in Walcott's poems and plays. Walcott is an avowedly Caribbean writer, acutely conscious of his culture and colonial heritage, but he has also made a lasting contribution to the way we read and value the western literary tradition. This comprehensive survey considers each of Walcott's published books, offering a guide for students, scholars and readers of Walcott. Students of Caribbean and postcolonial studies will find this a perfect introduction to this important writer.

Wole Soyinka
  • Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism
  • Biodun Jeyifo
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 November 2003
  • Biodun Jeyifo examines the connections between the innovative and influential writings of Wole Soyinka and his radical political activism. Jeyifo carries out detailed analyses of Soyinka's most ambitious works, relating them to the controversies generated by Soyinka's use of literature and theatre for radical political purposes. He gives a fascinating account of the profound but paradoxical affinities and misgivings Soyinka has felt about the significance of the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. Jeyifo also explores Soyinka's works with regard to the impact on his artistic sensibilities of the pervasiveness of representational ambiguity and linguistic exuberance in Yoruba culture. The analyses and evaluations of this study are presented in the context of Soyinka's sustained engagement with the violence of collective experience in post-independence, postcolonial Africa and the developing world. No existing study of Soyinka's works and career has attempted such a systematic investigation of their complex relationship to politics.

Jean Rhys
  • Elaine Savory
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    11 March 1999
  • Jean Rhys has long been central to debates in feminist, modernist, Caribbean, British and postcolonial writing. Elaine Savory's study, first published in 1999, incorporates and modifies previous critical approaches and is a critical reading of Rhys's entire oeuvre, including the stories and autobiography, and is informed by Rhys's own manuscripts. Designed both for the serious scholar on Rhys and those unfamiliar with her writing, Savory's book insists on the importance of a Caribbean-centred approach to Rhys, and shows how this context profoundly affects her literary style. Informed by contemporary arguments on race, gender, class and nationality, Savory explores Rhys's stylistic innovations - her use of colours, her exploitation of the trope of performance, her experiments with creative non-fiction and her incorporation of the metaphysical into her texts. This study offers a comprehensive account of the life and work of this most complex and enigmatic of writers.