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A classic work that overturns conventional assessments of African literature, offering a unique contribution to literary criticism.

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This groundbreaking work, first published in 1989, was one of the first to challenge the conventional critical assessment of African literature, and remains highly influential today.

Amuta´s key argument is that African literature can be discussed only within the wider framework of the dismantling of colonial rule and Western hegemony in Africa. In exploring the possibility of a dialectical, alternative critical base, he draws upon both classical Marxist aesthetics and the theories of African culture espoused by Fanon, Cabral and Ngugi. From these explorations, Amuta derives a new language of criticism, which is then applied to works by modern African writers as diverse as Achebe, Ousmane, Agostinho Neto and Dennis Brutus.

Amuta´s highly original and innovative approach remains relevant not only for assessing the literature of developing countries, but for Marxist and postcolonial theories of literary criticism more generally. The author´s elegance of argument and clarity of exposition makes this a distinguished and lasting contribution to debates around cultural expression in postcolonial Africa.

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Preface

Introduction

1. Ideological Formations in the Criticism of African Literature

2. Traditionalism and the Quest for an African Literary Aesthetic

3. Marxism and African Literature

4. A Dialectical Theory of African Literatures: Categories and Springboards

5. Issues and Problems in African Literature: A Dialectical Revision

6. History and the Dialetics of Narrative in the African Novel

7. Drama and Revolution in Africa

8. Poetry and Liberation Politics in Africa

9. Beyond Decolonization

Select Bibliography

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´Amuta´s monograph remains irreplaceable in being the very first systematic attempt to give us a cognitive map of where African literary theory came from.´
Biodun Jeyifo, from the Foreword

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