English Language and Literature

This research work is an attempt to unravel the archetype of tragic heroism in Shakespeare's OTHELLO and Ovid's ORPHEUS & EURYDICE. It compares between the classical tragic/epic hero and the hero of Elizabethan drama, discussing in detail the similarities and differences between the two forms of heroes.

Interventions have been made by scholars to locate African literary production within the social, political and economic contexts in which they occur. While most Marxist interventions in African literary practice engage African literary texts on mechanical Marxist approaches typical of the rigid application of Marxist concepts of class and ideology, there is a lack of engagement of research on a more dialectical approach of Marxist criticism such as the Jamesian political unconscious. Many research works on Marxist criticism of African literature establish the broad concerns of Marxism by demonstrating the extent to which literary works follow or repudiate progressive politics without any engagement with some of Marxism’s methodologies. This has resulted in ideological criticism of African literature taking place without an accompaniment of their Marxist linkages and critical stidies in Africa demonstrate that there is an absence of research on the dialectical approach of Marxist criticism such as Fredric Jameson’s ideation of the political unconscious. Using Festus Iyayi’s Heroes and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun as primary texts of study, this research paper restores a more dialectical approach to Marxist criticism by prioritizing questions of form over questions of content.

In the 21 st century, African writers have adopted the Bildungsroman to explore issues of migration and symbolisms of nationhood by proverbially 'writing back' in a unique African perspective which methodically deconstructs and subverts the western conventional form, while examining contemporary issues of identity, nationhood and disruption. By subverting the traditional idea of a young person growing into adulthood and attaining maturity or a coming-ofage, in place of characters who are unable to fully mature or experience a failed coming-of-age, the anti-bildungsroman articulates a perspective that realistically mirrors and reflects the unique experiences and challenges that postcolonial Africans face. Literary scholarship demonstrates that very little criticism of African literature has been done on postcolonial Bildungsroman due mostly to apathy in adolescent fiction by African writers of the late 20 th century whose literature prominently featured the archetypal grown, male protagonist that is symbolic of nationhood. The paper, therefore, examines the various methods through which contemporary African fiction such as Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), Chigozie Obioma's The Fishermen (2015), Akwaeke Emezi's Death of Vivek Oji (2020) and Abdellah Taia's Salvation Army (2009), four of which constitute our primary texts of analysis, among others, subvert the Western conventional form and provide the various articulations of the anti-bildungsroman in a postcolonial, African (Nigerian/Moroccan) context. The paper advances recent knowledge in postcolonial literature by proposing to reassess misleading approaches through identifying complicity with Western form, and examining the intersection of the Western traditional form and modern forms of identity, in a postcolonial context.