No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Daniel Vitkus, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 7, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains v, 54 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

For years, critics have used Black writers' interweaving of African-derived oral textual features and European written forms to reject the concept of the Great Divide between orality and writing in literacy studies. These critics primarily see the hybridized texts of writers of African descent as a model that assists in the complex union of writing and orality. My argument is that the integrationist model is not the only way, perhaps not even the most fruitful way, to read the hybridized texts of writers of African descent. I develop a reading of Anglophone African, African-Caribbean, and African-Canadian literature that sees the synthesis of orality and writing as an emergent discourse, free of the dogmatisms of textuality and of colonial literary standards, that contributes to the cultural and political aspirations of writers of African descent. In transcribing African-derived orality into writing, Black writers emphasize the ethnic component of their African identity, thereby decolonizing their literature. Consequently, the literature functions as locus or epitome of community-created culture and counter-colonial discourse, portraying the Black writer as a self-assertive community agent with the potential for forging a new historically informed identity. My introduction identifies the scope of the study, defining what constitutes African-derived oral textual features and outlining the critical theories that will be instrumental to my analysis. I also explain why I selected the writers Wole Soyinka (African), Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Louise Bennett (African-Caribbean), Lillian Allen, Marlene Nourbese Philip, and Clifton Joseph (African-Canadian) as examples of writers who have utilized orality in writing as political and cultural expression. Chapter One provides a background to pre-colonial African oral discourse. Chapters Two, Three, and Four respectively focus on Anglophone African, African Caribbean, and African Canadian poets' uses of orality in writing to reflect an eclectic cultural heritage. A brief conclusion follows these chapters. It reaffirms my primary thesis that the dynamic union of orality and writing in Anglophone African, African-Caribbean, and African-Canadian written poetry functions as the expression of a new kind of cultural and political discourse, in search of a new audience and a critical approach that requires both Africanist and European critical perspectives.

This thesis analyzes how Afro-Caribbean poets writing in English appropriate language and use memory as a thematic tool to articulate postcolonial identities. The present study is organized in three parts: the first part provides the necessary theoretical background regarding postcolonial theory, the politics of hybridity and resistance / the second part examines poets&rsquo / struggles over language and social forms of poetry / the third part deals with the site of memory as a revisionary tool in rewriting history poetically, binding pre-colonial and colonial identities, and healing the fractured psyches of postcolonial societies. The struggle over language and the use of memory enable the Afro-Caribbean poet to reconfigure individual and collective identities. For these purposes, Grace Nichols&rsquo / i is a long memoried woman (1983), Edward Kamau Brathwaite&rsquo / s X/Self (1987) and Linton Kwesi Johnson&rsquo / s Tings&rsquo / an Times (1991) will be analyzed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Saskatchewan, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves [184]-198). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape9/PQDD%5F0027/NQ37868.pdf.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Saskatchewan, 1999. / Title from PDF file, viewed Mar. 24, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [184]-198).