Any study of Kiswahili prose fiction shows that there is a wide spread portrayal of conflicts existing between the traditional and the modern culture in the East African societies. This thesis looks at the portrayal of these conflicts in the novels of Euphrase Kezilahabi, who is one of the most prominent contemporary Swahili fiction writers. In the thesis I have studied Kezilahabi's novels from a story structuralist point of view and a more stylistic point of view. In this case I was able to combine both the traditional literary analysis of plot, theme, character and language with more sophisticated approaches as well as with computational linguistic techniques. The whole thesis has eight chapters. The first chapter, which is the introduction, looks at how prose fiction has been used in many parts of the world to portray the social problems of societies at particular historical moments. Attention is paid to Commonwealth and African Literature as well as Swahili Literature. The second chapter is a structural approach to the content and meaning of Kezilahabi's novels. It is from this study that the underlying theme is perceived, characters and other minor themes identified. The relationship between characters and their place and role in the development of the story has been discussed in chapter three. This chapter also looks at the characters' contribution to the themes and their relationship with the semantic structure. In chapter four, the themes identified in the discussion above were then looked at in detail independently and in relation to themselves, the characters and the development of the story. Kezilahabi's use of language and imagery seemed to be very important in the study of his work. Chapter five dealt with his use of imagery and compared his story structure with that of folk tales in an attempt to see if he was influenced by the oral tradition. A computational analysis of the verbs he uses is done in chapter six while other grammatical devices like time relaters, place definers and connectives are discussed in detail in chapter seven. Chapter eight, which is the concluding chapter, discusses Kezilahabi's fourth novel in relation to the issues highlighted in the thesis.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:516853 |
| Date | January 1987 |
| Creators | Mlacha, S. A. K. |
| Publisher | SOAS, University of London |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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