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Allegory and Meaning: Reading African, African American, and Caribbean Literature
Allegory and Meaning is the study of the allegorical-cum-symbolic mode in selected African, African American, and Caribbean literary works. It argues that the domain of allegory in these works constitutes, at bottom, a contested site of paradoxes. The discussion of these African, African American, and Caribbean writers' use of the allegorical mode is a serious attempt to recover the subtext of their works. The stories these writers tell are quite often thinly veiled. The events, characters, space, and time in their narratives are presented, first in their literal context, and then, in the other, larger context, the ideas that they are intended to convey or the significance they potentially bear. From Soyinka's political allegory in Season of Anomy to Okigbo's astral kratophany in Labyrinths; from Baraka's agonistic moral allegory in Palace of the Peacock, and V.S. Reid's apocalyptic allegory in New Day, these writers demonstrate the processes of double signification where the order of words represents actions and characters, and the actions and characters in turn represent ideas.
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Allegory and Meaning: Reading African, African American, and Caribbean Literature
Allegory and Meaning is the study of the allegorical-cum-symbolic mode in selected African, African American, and Caribbean literary works. It argues that the domain of allegory in these works constitutes, at bottom, a contested site of paradoxes. The discussion of these African, African American, and Caribbean writers' use of the allegorical mode is a serious attempt to recover the subtext of their works. The stories these writers tell are quite often thinly veiled. The events, characters, space, and time in their narratives are presented, first in their literal context, and then, in the other, larger context, the ideas that they are intended to convey or the significance they potentially bear. From Soyinka's political allegory in Season of Anomy to Okigbo's astral kratophany in Labyrinths; from Baraka's agonistic moral allegory in Palace of the Peacock, and V.S. Reid's apocalyptic allegory in New Day, these writers demonstrate the processes of double signification where the order of words represents actions and characters, and the actions and characters in turn represent ideas.
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Allegory and Meaning: Reading African, African American, and Caribbean Literature

Allegory and Meaning: Reading African, African American, and Caribbean Literature

by Ikenna Dieke
Allegory and Meaning: Reading African, African American, and Caribbean Literature

Allegory and Meaning: Reading African, African American, and Caribbean Literature

by Ikenna Dieke

Overview

Allegory and Meaning is the study of the allegorical-cum-symbolic mode in selected African, African American, and Caribbean literary works. It argues that the domain of allegory in these works constitutes, at bottom, a contested site of paradoxes. The discussion of these African, African American, and Caribbean writers' use of the allegorical mode is a serious attempt to recover the subtext of their works. The stories these writers tell are quite often thinly veiled. The events, characters, space, and time in their narratives are presented, first in their literal context, and then, in the other, larger context, the ideas that they are intended to convey or the significance they potentially bear. From Soyinka's political allegory in Season of Anomy to Okigbo's astral kratophany in Labyrinths; from Baraka's agonistic moral allegory in Palace of the Peacock, and V.S. Reid's apocalyptic allegory in New Day, these writers demonstrate the processes of double signification where the order of words represents actions and characters, and the actions and characters in turn represent ideas.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780761851219
Publisher: University Press of America
Publication date: 09/02/2010
Pages: 188
Product dimensions: 6.09(w) x 9.14(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

Ikenna Dieke earned his Ph.D. in English at the Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is the author of two books and numerous articles. Currently, Dieke is a professor of Africana at the University of Arizona.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction: Allegory and the Literary Imagination
Part 2 AFRICA
Chapter 3 1. Bessie Head's Maru: Existential Allegory, Pathology of Difference, and the Quest for Conscience
Chapter 4 2. Masada as Symbol in Season of Anomy
Chapter 5 3. Soyinka: From the Failed Narcissus to Heroic Orphism
Chapter 6 4. Awoonor, Okigbo, and Soyinka: Nostos, Symbolism, and Prima Donnas
Part 7 AFRICAN AMERICA
Chapter 8 5. Baraka, Marquis de Sade, and the Individual Will
Chapter 9 6. Baraka and the Allegoric Meaning of the Tragic Spirit
Chapter 10 7. Baraka, America, and the Allegory of Racial Sin
Chapter 11 8. Gwendolyn Brook's Maud Martha: Narrative as Allegory of Initiation
Part 12 GENERAL
Chapter 13 9. Redemptive Fantasy and Allegory of the Endtime
Part 14 CARIBBEAN
Chapter 15 10. A Cosmic Postulate of Eros: Reading Harris's Palace of the Peacock
Chapter 16 11. A Woman Transfigured: Reading Derek Walcott and Wilson Harris
Chapter 17 Notes
Chapter 18 Selected Bibliography
Chapter 19 Index
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