“My-house-without-a-door-an-egg”: Reading an African perspective of the chronotope in selected works of Amos Tutuola, Ben Okri and Alain Mabanckou
Main Article Content
Abstract
This paper argues that the fusion of time and space in the African literary world portrayed in Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard, Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and Alain Mabanckou’s Broken Glass thickens and becomes visible to the interpretative reader through the riddle and the narrative world(s) that it structures out. Noteworthy, the respected Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin conceptualises the literary chronotope (creative fusion of time and space in the novel) as a trope for investigating the working of time and space in the European novel. However, this theory of time and space has buttressed the critical analysis of the African novel, though mostly without incorporating the African perspective, especially the important riddle-narrative trope. Nonetheless, the critical reading of the selected African novels of Tutuola, Okri and Mabanckou in this paper indicates that perhaps the riddle is at the heart of the working of time and space in the African literary imagination, particularly in African novels that address themselves to the continuities of European colonialism. The paper employs qualitative textual techniques for selecting sources of data as well as the critical processes of interpretation and analysis.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This open-access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY-NC-SA) license.
You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
How to Cite
References
Akínyẹmí, A. (2015). Orature and Yorùbá Riddles. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Awedoba, A. K. (2000). Social Roles of Riddles, with Reference to Kasena Society. Research Review New Series 16.2 , 35-51.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics. In M. Holquist, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (pp. 84-258). Austin: University of Texas Press.
Barthes, R. (1991). Myth Today. In P. A. Moody (Ed.), Readings in Textual Studies (pp. 74-108). Massachusetts: Copley Publishing Group.
Derrida, J. (1991). Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. In P. A. Moody, & P. A. Moody (Ed.), Readings in Textual Studies (pp. 178-183). Massachusetts: Copley Publishing Group.
Garritano, C. (2000). Restaging the Past: The Writing of The Tale of the Beautiful Daughter by Abrahams, Tutuola, Ogali and Aidoo. In M. N. Eke, K. W. Harrow, & E. Yewel (Eds.), African Images: Recent Studies and Text in Cinema No. 8 (pp. 153-168). Asmara: Africa World Press, Inc.
Gikandi, S. (2008). The Postcolonial Wizard: A Review of Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Wizard of the Crow. Transition No. 98, 156-169.
Herbeck, J. (2011). User-Friendliness and Virtual Reality: A Hypertextual Reading of Alain Mabanckou’s Verre Cassé. Boise State University Scholar Works: World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations, 49-59.
Hulme, P. (1986). Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492-1797. New York: Methuen.
Mabanckou, A. (2010). Broken Glass. (H. Stevenson, Trans.) New York: Soft Skull.
Mabanckou, A. (2012). Memoirs of a Porcupine. (H. Stevenson, Trans.) Berkeley: Soft Skull Press.
Moody, P. A. (Ed.). (1991). Readings in Textual Studies. Acton, Massachusetts: Coply Publishing Group.
Njogu, K. (1997). On the Polyphonic Nature of the Gicaandi Genre. African Languages and Cultures, 10(1), 47-62.
Okri, B. (1992). The Famished Road. Ibadan: Spectrum Books.
Soyinka, W. (1976). Myth, Literature and the African World. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Tarvi, L. (2015). Chronotope and Metaphor as Ways of Time-Space Contextual Blending: The Principle of Relativity in Literature. Bakhtiniana, São Paulo, 10 (1), 207-221.
Tutuola, A. (1953). The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town. London: Grove Press.