Mother Africa on a pedestal: The male heritage in African literature and criticism

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Periodical article

Title:	Mother Africa on a pedestal: The male heritage in African literature and criticism
Author:	Schipper-De Leeuw, M.
Year:	1987
Periodical:	African Literature Today
Issue:	15
Pages:	35-54
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Africa
Subjects:	women writers women literature
Abstract:	This paper examines three factors that have contributed in different ways to the development of woman's image in African literature. These are 1) the mythological 'prephase'; 2) the colonial heritage; and 3) developments since the 1960s. It relates these points by comparing the images produced in their respective (con)texts. As always in literary history, the African woman today is creating her own literary texts on the basis of inherited literary and social conditions, on the one hand continuing existing traditions and on the other hand opposing them. The paper concludes with some reflections on the critic's attitude toward the woman writer. Notes, ref.