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32 - The Reinvention of the Novel in Africa

from Part VI - Poetics, Genre, Intermediality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Neil ten Kortenaar
Edited by
Debjani Ganguly
Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

The African novel exhibits formal innovations that could not have been predicted by considering its difference from the European novel or its continuity with oral verbal cultural traditions. Those innovations reveal something important about the nature of the literary imagination in Africa and the nature of the genre of the novel. This article considers three such innovations: the parental point of view, the elevation of narrative focus to take in the head of state, and the fictive state.

Keywords

African novelparents and fathers in literaturedictators in literaturepolitics in literaturefictive states in literature
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 621 - 635
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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