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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Entropy and energy: Lagos as city of words |
Author: | Dunton, Chris |
Year: | 2008 |
Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
Volume: | 39 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 68-78 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Nigeria |
Subjects: | novels urban life towns |
External link: | http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v039/39.2.dunton.pdf |
Abstract: | In his 1971 study 'City of Words: American Fiction, 1950-1970', Tony Tanner employs the term 'entropy' as a measure of order/disorder to characterize the vision of the city offered by American novelists of the second half of the twentieth century. The term applies equally to the accounts of Lagos (Nigeria) given by novelists such as Cyprian Ekwensi and Gabriel Okara in the 1950s and 1960s and, even more markedly, to the work of members of the 'third generation' of Nigerian novelists writing in English. An examination of texts by Helon Habila, Akin Adesokan, and Maik Nwosu reveals, however, that Lagos is characterized by these and other novelists not only as a site of disorder and decay but also as an environment in which creative energies are nurtured that are held to constitute a corrective and liberatory force. What distinguishes the contemporary Lagos novel from its precursors, is the emphasis placed on the possibilities for cognition and action, and in particular the possibilities inherent in the act of writing as a means to assert a meaningful existence. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |