Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake


Book Description

The book Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake, through a pluralist critical approach, interrogates Butake’s major creative works—Lake God, And Palm Wine Will Flow, The Survivors, Shoes and Four Men in Arms, Dance of the Vampires and The Rape of Michelle —mainly in terms of their political underpinnings and cultural signification. The intention is to place his drama within the socio-political matrix of Cameroon and demonstrate the topicality of the issues of governance, marginalization, and corruption in Cameroon or Africa that Butake consistently foregrounds in his creative works. The study opens with an overview of the historical and social milieu that feeds Butake’s imagination and the introduction is followed by an interview of the playwright in which he explains his mission as a writer. The next two chapters appraise the political symbolism of Butake’s plays and chapter five undertakes a comparison of the colonial legacy and the culture of corruption in Butake’s Lake God and The Rape ofMichelle. Women in Butake’s imaginative universe play a non-negligible role in change. They are portrayed as political and social activists in their challenge to autocratic rule. This is the leitmotif of chapter six, which highlights the contribution of women towards political change in Cameroon. In chapters seven and eight, the focus is on articulating the cultural signification of Butake’s plays in terms of political change. Concomitantly, these chapters also demonstrate Butake’s seamless incorporation of elements of oral literature in his drama, as he interpolates proverbs, divinations and other elements of orality in his work. Chapter nine of the book points out how Butake foregrounds the character traits of his protagonists against the backdrop of traditional Noni religion as well as Christianity. Thus, the bigotry and belligerence of both the Fon and Father Leo in Lake God, for example, are projected through a supernatural frame. The conclusion appraises the contemporaneity of Butake’s drama. His oeuvre continues to inspire so many people: from disenfranchised groups that see in his drama a path to reclaiming liberties and to critics who are challenged to hone their literary tools in the endeavor to situate his works within the dynamics of politics and culture in Africa.




Magical Realism in Africa


Book Description

Magical realism has deep roots across many African languages and regions. This book explores African magical realism from a transregional and inclusive approach, drawing on contributions from different literary genres across the continent. The chapters in this book constitute a sustained and insightful reflection on the salient components of this literary genre as well as evaluating its connections to themes of conflict, violence, women’s rights, trauma, oppression, culture, governance, and connecting to the African self. As well as theorizing magical realism, this book engages with African expressive performance across various formats, novels, plays, and films. This book investigates African magical realism from its origins up to the present day, where local oral traditions link indigenous cosmogonic stories with Western literature, as well as with the specific narrative traditions of Arabo‐Islamic literature. The rich analysis draws on works from across the continent, including Egypt, Sudan, Mauritania, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Angola, and Mozambique. This book is a timely contribution to debates within African literature, cultural anthropology, ethnography, and folklore.




Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon


Book Description

Cameroon is a land of much promise, but a land of unfulfilled promises. It has the potential to be an economically developed and democratic society but the struggle to live up to its potential has not gone well. Since independence there have been only two presidents of Cameroon; the current one has been in office since 1982. Endowed with a variety of climates and agricultural environments, numerous minerals and substantial forests, and a dynamic population, this is a country that should be a leader of Africa. Instead, we find a country almost paralyzed by corruption and poor management, a country with a low life expectancy and serious health problems, and a country from which the most talented and highly educated members of the population are emigrating in large numbers. To all of this is recently added a serious terrorism problem, Boko Haram, in the north, a separatist movement in the Anglophone west, refugee influxes in the north and east, and bandits from the Central African Republic attacking eastern villages. This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Republic of Cameroon.




Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe


Book Description

Through mainly a New Historicist critical approach, this book explores how Shakespeare and Achebe employ supernatural devices such as prophecies, dreams, gods/goddesses, beliefs, and divinations to create complex characters. Even though these features indicate the preponderance of the belief in the supernatural by some people of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and traditional Igbo societies, Shakespeare and Achebe primarily use the supernatural to represent the states of mind of their protagonists. Both writers appropriate supernatural features to mirror tragic flaws such as ambition, arrogance, impulsiveness, and fear that contribute to the downfall of Macbeth, Lear, Okonkwo, and Ezeulu. We relate to some of these characters because they project our inner minds, principal drives that may be hidden within us. Therefore, Shakespeare and Achebe’s preoccupation with the supernatural adds subtlety to their characterization and enhances their readability by situating their art beyond time, place, or particularity.




Just a bend


Book Description

Just A Bend delivers an overall powerful message of assurance that, although life is full of bends, these should be taken only as moments for deep reflections given that no journey is ever predictably straight or short. It is a collection of deep, scintillating, captivating, motivating and inspiring poems that span various subject areas; culture, the environment, politics, economics – to highlight the human intrigues of marginalization, exploitation, jealousy, and hate that give rise to the multifarious human predicaments and woes. Despite this dark side, Just A Bend also portrays the bright side of life by celebrating care, love, and peace, and even individuals that deserve to be recognised in space and time. It offers a unique experimentation with type, style and form, that aims to encourage and inspire people who might not have thought of reading a poem, let alone, writing one, to pick up the golden sceptre in the bold journey of poetic expression.




Post-Colonial Cameroon


Book Description

In this unique volume, leading scholars examine how Cameroonians organize and experience their lives under Cameroonian leadership and local responses to that leadership. The volume offers essential case studies that allow us to examine the lives of ordinary people in post-colonial Africa through five lenses: politics, society and culture, economy, international relations, and migration. It places the nation’s contemporary challenges within a broader political, economic, and socio-cultural context, and uses that to make recommendations for future directions. The book also celebrates areas in which the country has done well and calls on its citizens to build on those achievements. This volume is forward-looking and as such raises important questions about issues of development, ethnicity, wealth, poverty, and class.




The Performance Arts in Africa


Book Description

The Performance Arts in Africa is the first anthology of key writings on African performance from many parts of the continent. As well as play texts, off the cuff comedy routines and masquerades, this exciting collection encompasses community-based drama, tourist presentations, television soap operas, puppet theatre, dance, song, and ceremonial ritualised performances. Themes discussed are: * theory * performers and performing * voice, language and words * spectators, space and time. The book also includes an introduction which examines some of the crucial debates, past and present, surrounding African performance. The Performance Arts of Africa is an essential introduction for those new to the field and is an invaluable reference source for those already familiar with African performance.




And Palm-wine Will Flow


Book Description




New Theatre in Francophone and Anglophone Africa


Book Description

This volume is mainly a collection of papers presented at the 1995 Mandelieu conference in France which brought together artists and critics. The theme was that of contemporary African theatre in the former British and French empires. The contributions are of interest to those working in theatre generally and to those specialising in African performance, development studies and comparative literature. The varied topics include: popular theatre, Soyinka and France, syncretic theatre, comparisons between Anglophone and Francophone theatre in the Cameroon, censorship, development theatre and Sony Labou Tansi. There are also interview with Southern African writers and pieces of creative writing.







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