scispace - formally typeset
Journal ArticleDOI

Textuality and worldliness: Crossing the boundaries: A postmodernist reading of Achebe, Conrad and Lessing

Veronica Bowker
- 01 Mar 1989 - 
- Vol. 5, Iss: 1, pp 55-67
Reads0
Chats0
TLDR
This article put Achebe's reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, in which he accuses the author of being a NAZI type of racist, guilty of the dehumanization of Africa and the setting of men against each other.
Abstract
Summary In its oppositional discourse postmodernism emphasises, among other things, the need for an incisive critique of the excesses to which an unqualified belief in reason has led. This need opens up a space for responses to literature such as Chinua Achebe's reading of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, in which he accuses the author of being a NAZI type of racist, guilty of the dehumanization of Africa and the setting of men against each other. Achebe's “hard look at Conrad” is firstly placed within the postmodernistic framework of Said's theory of culture by means of an investigation of the complexity of the relationship between the text and the world in Conrad's novel; and then within the wider context of texts by non‐African writers, such as Doris Lessing, who have made different kinds of use of African space.

read more

Citations
More filters
Dissertation

Wildness in Doris Lessing's African stories

TL;DR: In this paper, the Faculty of Arts in Partial Fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MA in English at the University of Zululand, South Africa, 2003.
Journal ArticleDOI

Living under the sign of contradiction: Self and other in Conrad's Heart of Darkness

TL;DR: In this article, living under the sign of contradiction: Self and other in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the authors discuss the relationship between self-and other in the context of Conrad's book.
Journal ArticleDOI

Madness and the store: Representations of settler society in Doris Lessing's the grass is singing and Daphne Rooke's a grove of fever trees

TL;DR: The Madness and the store: Representations of settler society in Doris Lessing's the grass is singing and Daphne Rooke's a grove of fever trees as discussed by the authors.
References
More filters
Book

The world, the text, and the critic

TL;DR: In these essays, Edward Said challenges contemporary literary criticism as discussed by the authors, and examines, among other things, narrative, focusing on Joseph Conrad and the curious dearth of literature on Jonathan Swift.
Book

An Image of Africa

Chinua Achebe
TL;DR: A few weeks later I received two very touching letters from high school children in Yonkers, New York, who had just read Things Fall Apart and were particularly happy to learn about the customs and superstitions of an African tribe.
Book

The Grass Is Singing

TL;DR: Part of the "Simply Stories" series, this ELT reader is an edited version of Doris Lessing's "The Grass is Singing", reduced to 2360 words as discussed by the authors.