African Horizons: The Landscapes of African Fiction

by Christine Loflin Dillon

Overview

As non-African writers have created images of Africa that suit their own needs, African writers have countered these images with African landscapes that emphasize the landmarks and horizons that are significant for Africans. In this volume, Loflin explores the importance of landscape description in African fiction, arguing that discussion of landscape can reveal the geographic, religious, political, and social boundaries of the text. In her analysis, Loflin examines themes of nationalism and ethnic identity, showing how the question of landscape is further complicated when writers in forced or voluntary exile from their native countries reconfigure their relationship to the landscape of Africa.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313297335
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/26/1998
Series:	Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies: Contemporary Black Poets , #184
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

CHRISTINE LOFLIN is Assistant Professor of English at Emory University. She has taught at Grinell College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Allegheny College, and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. She has published articles on Ngugi wa Thiong'o and Flora Nwapa, and is on the editorial board of the Jourbanal of Caribbean Literatures.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Visions of Africa
Mother Africa: African Women and the Land in West African Literature
The Landscape of Religion in West African Literature by Men
"In the Land of a Dying Illusion": The Landscape of Black South African Township Novels
Women Writers at Home and in Exile: The Examples of Bessie Head and Miriam Tlali
"And Then the Bush Avenged Itself": The Landscape of White South African Fiction
Select Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Examines African literature in English to challenge western critics' assertion that it contains no description of landscape. Demonstrates how such critics expect conventional European Romantic ecstasy over the beauty of nature without human figures and a reproduction of the Dark Continent image they know so well. Considers recent novels by Ngugi wa Thiong'o, west African men and women, writers in South African townships, Bessie Head, Mirium Tlali, and white South Africans. Some of the six essays have been revised from presentations and previous publications. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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