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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Resuming a broken dialogue: prophecy, nationalist strategies, and religious discourses in Ngugi's early work
Author:Mathuray, MarkISNI
Year:2009
Periodical:Research in African Literatures
Volume:40
Issue:2
Pages:40-62
Language:English
Geographic term:Kenya
Subjects:novels
Kikuyu
prophets
About person:Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938-)ISNI
External link:http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/research_in_african_literatures/v040/40.2.mathuray.pdf
Abstract:This paper departs from and problematizes the almost exclusive focus in criticism of the early works of Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Kenya) on Christianity and the effects of the colonial intrusion. Following Ngugi's exhortation to resume the broken dialogue with the gods of his people, Ngugi's early novels are read in relation to precolonial East African discourses and practices of prophecy, Gikuyu religion, and Gikuyu nationalist strategies that drew on different and opposing prophetic traditions, and, in a broader sense, discourses of religion in Africa. By locating his early work within the nexus of these discourses, a far more nuanced view of Ngugi's relation to religious and nationalist discourses emerges. The paper also attempts to uncover a symbolic geometry in Ngugi's novels determined by Gikuyu religious and cultural concepts. A focus on 'The River Between' reveals certain authorial deployments of historical inaccuracies and dislocations in the interests of a schematization of the conflicts in the novel. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract]
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