Ayodele Bamidele

The African Novel in the Context of Combat Poetics: Selected Works of Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Sembene Ousmane and Festus Iyayi Ayodele Bamidele

The book,with a continental sweep, conducts an indepth critical analysis of twelve representative African novels to prove beyond doubt that the novel is necessarily the product of the society that produces it. This work has shown that combat poetics in African Literature is the product of the crises engendered by the historical contradictions of imperialist ideologies of colonialism and neo-colonialism. These contradictions gravitate to cataclysmic socio-psychological,socio-political and socio-economic anomie that betide the referent societies that nurture the selected novels for this work. The thesis of the work,therefore,is that this revolutionary consciousness makes it necessary for African novelists to enlist their creative works in battle against the forces of oppression and consequently stimulate efforts towards the realisation of a qualitative higher democratic social life.