All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah

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dc.contributor.advisorSofianos, Ken_ZA
dc.contributor.advisorOuma, Cen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorChetty, Kavishen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2015-08-10T06:32:04Z
dc.date.available2015-08-10T06:32:04Z
dc.date.issued2015en_ZA
dc.descriptionInlcudes bibliographical references.en_ZA
dc.description.abstractThis paper examines representations of existential alienation in two early novels by the Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah. The introductory chapter extrapolates an account of how the representational strategies of existential alienation produce specific effects on the act of self - writing. From there, the paper explores these effects in Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), arguing that alienation is a valuable heuristic in unlocking the novel’s complex meditation on how abstract, macrohistorical forces like neo - colonialism come to be registered in the most intimate aspects of the subject’s experience of the world. As such, if one restores the historical details of Ghana’s “post-colonial” moment, the novel is redeemed from Chinua Achebe’s assertion that the novel is “sick [...] not with the sickness of Ghana, but the sickness of the human condition”. Representations of alienation have a diagnostic function in The Beautyful Ones . The second chapter examines alienation under the new imaginative terrains of Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons (1973), and articulates the experiments in formal representation in that novel with Armah’s inaugural concern with the possibility of a prognostic appraisal of the alienation so widely thematised in his earlier trilogy. Both studies are undertaken, finally, to explore the ways in which modernity has been received in African literature, and to demonstrate the analytic value of existential alienation in understanding the crises of a specifically African modernity.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationChetty, K. (2015). <i>All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13662en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationChetty, Kavish. <i>"All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13662en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationChetty, K. 2015. All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Chetty, Kavish AB - This paper examines representations of existential alienation in two early novels by the Ghanaian author Ayi Kwei Armah. The introductory chapter extrapolates an account of how the representational strategies of existential alienation produce specific effects on the act of self - writing. From there, the paper explores these effects in Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), arguing that alienation is a valuable heuristic in unlocking the novel’s complex meditation on how abstract, macrohistorical forces like neo - colonialism come to be registered in the most intimate aspects of the subject’s experience of the world. As such, if one restores the historical details of Ghana’s “post-colonial” moment, the novel is redeemed from Chinua Achebe’s assertion that the novel is “sick [...] not with the sickness of Ghana, but the sickness of the human condition”. Representations of alienation have a diagnostic function in The Beautyful Ones . The second chapter examines alienation under the new imaginative terrains of Armah’s Two Thousand Seasons (1973), and articulates the experiments in formal representation in that novel with Armah’s inaugural concern with the possibility of a prognostic appraisal of the alienation so widely thematised in his earlier trilogy. Both studies are undertaken, finally, to explore the ways in which modernity has been received in African literature, and to demonstrate the analytic value of existential alienation in understanding the crises of a specifically African modernity. DA - 2015 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2015 T1 - All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah TI - All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13662 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/13662
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationChetty K. All life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armah. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 2015 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13662en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of English Language and Literatureen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherEnglish Literary Studiesen_ZA
dc.titleAll life converges to some centre: alienation and modernity in the early Ayi Kwei Armahen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMAen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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