West African Poetry: A Critical History
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Book Overview
Previous studies of African poetry have tended to concentrate either on its political content or on its relationship to various European schools. This book examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Do the roots of such poetry lie in Africa or in Europe? In committing their work to writing, do poets lose more than they gain? Can the immediacy of oral performance ever be recovered? Robert Fraser's account of two centuries of West African verse examines its subjugation to a succession of international styles: from the heroic couplet to the austerity of experimental Modernism. Successive chapters take us through the N gritude movement and the emergence of anglophone free verse in the 1950s to the rediscovery in recent years of the neglected springs of orality, which is the subject of the concluding chapter.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:052131223X
ISBN13:9780521312233
Release Date:September 1986
Publisher:Cambridge University Press
Length:364 Pages
Weight:1.30 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"
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