Rosemary Gray
Biographic Data
| ID | 3955840 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rosemary Gray |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rosemary |
| FAMILY NAME | Gray |
| SIGNATURE | GRAY R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pretoria |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6583-4319 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
From the ‘Cradle of Civilization’ to Ben Okri’s Changing Destiny (2021)
The paper begins with a brief discussion of myths and legends, ‘the cradle of civilization’, and an outline of the BA/KA relationship, the latter a pivotal mythological concept that underpins both the generative poem and its migration into a play, seen through the prism of a 4000-year-old Egyptian poem, Sinuhe. This is followed by a summary of the 1875 BCE funerary autobiography. A comparison of the framing poem with Ben Okri’s drama, Changing De…
Unfathomable Depths
Ben Okri’s Generational Protest Poem, “The Incandescence of the Wind”
The central premise in this article is that Ben Okri's generational protest poem, “The Incandescence of the Wind”, first published in An African Elegy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992) and republished in Rise like Lions (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), seeks to make sense of a profoundly disturbing encounter with contemporary reality through a revisioning of nationhood and poetic responsibility in war-torn Nigeria in 1982. The argument draws on …
Countering Mind-forg’d Manacles in Ben Okri’s The Freedom Artist (2019)
This article seeks to unveil Ben Okri’s antidote to the proposition that the “normal” world is an asylum for mind control. Acknowledging its rich literary undercurrent, I posit that The Freedom Artist (2019), countering Blake’s “mind-forg’d manacles” in “London”, is a culmination of Mental Fight (1999); the novel is a linear progression of the anthology’s subtitle: “an anti-spell for the 21st century”. Although aligning my reading with the view t…
Ben Okri’s stoku , “ The Standeruppers” (2017)
This article is predicated on two principal sources: Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (2014) and Ben Okri’s unpublished stoku, “The Standeruppers” (2017). It invokes Edward O. Wilson’s 2002 argument on the inherent dangers of the human trajectory: the irony of the survival of our own species. Kolbert dubs human[un]kind’s predatory proclivity that threatens creation, our “unnatural history”. Using Okri’s Olduvai Gorge inspired rock poems (…
Redreaming ways of seeing
Drawing on A Way of Being Free (1997) and A Time for New Dreams (2011) among other Okrian texts, this article is a discussion of the notion of redreaming ways of seeing through intuitive creativity. The argument is divided into three parts: the role of intuitive creativity; redreaming ways of seeing in The Landscapes Within (1981); and intuition or “the landscapes within”. The deployment of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Roland Barthes’s Image,…
Fresh challenges faced on the ground by the Kingdom of the Sky
This article argues that Lesotho’s landlocked position, which inhibits trade and results in enclaves of the poor, not only leads to its dependency on South Africa, but also contributes to its instability. It points out that destabilisation remains a problem in spite of Lesotho having served as an excellent model of peaceful transfer of power in a strengthened democratic arena under its 1993 Constitution, as the country had just celebrated 20 year…
Phenomenological ecology in two occasional poems by Ben Okri
This article begins with a brief discussion of the three terms: the poet, ontopoiesis and eco-phenomenology or phenomenological ecology. An explication of its thrust, viz. the significance of sowing/sewing ‘a quilt of harmony’ (Wild 2012: 20), in relation to the broad yet symbiotic theme of cosmic ecology follows. The discussion proceeds by presenting a close critical analysis of Ben Okri's ‘Lines in Potentis’, a poem commissioned by the then Lor…
‘A lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Ben Okri's Wild (2012)
The argument begins by claiming that the phrase, ‘a clear lucid stream of everywhereness,’ taken from Ben Okri's The landscapes within, at once encapsulates the postmodern theories of complexity and relativity and evokes a cosmic dimension and a striving for Dasein [authentic human existence] that inform his poetic vision in his latest collection of poetry, Wild (2012). It proceeds to argue for the complexity inherent in the notion ‘postmodernism…
When Chaos Is the God of an Era
The article begins by contextualizing Ben Okri’s concept of reality within a traditional, cultural framework. A brief discussion of the trajectory of African writing and the standard classifications of the mode of the Okri oeuvre as either non-realist or magical realism follows. The argument challenges both appellations in light of a fairly recent interview with the author (London, 16 February 2011) in which Okri redefines “reality” in terms of a…
Introduction
This issue of Journal of Literary Studies/Tydskrif vir literatuur-wetenskap, guest-edited by Rosemary Gray, is dedicated to works of Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri. Linear threads of utopianism, history and civilisation, language and writing, notions of reality, politics, literary aesthetics and intertextuality, postmodernism and postcolony form an interlacertine pattern that draws six articles together into coherent whole. It is, at once,…
Mythic Conjunctions in Transit
Drawing on Ben Okri's A Time for New Dreams (2011) and Wole Soyinka's Myth, Literature and the African World ([1976]1995), this article adopts a literary aesthetics approach, explaining that mythic conjunctions are inherent in ontopoiesis or the self-induced development of consciousness (Tymeniecka 1992). Okri (2011: 27) argues that self-creativity or innovation “come from being able first to see what is there, and not there; to hear what is said…
Interview with Ben Okri
Introduction First, let me express my deep gratitude to you for taking time out of your busy schedule and the public demands made upon so celebrated a writer to talk to a reader who finds your works--be they poetic, dramatic, or prose--intriguing and compelling. I can well understand why the International Pen Club has you as their vice-president. Secondly, I must tell you that I would like to use this interview as the opening piece in a monograph…
“A Moment in Timelessness”
Spirit of Place”. Mungoshi’s Rolling World
This paper cites Morrissey’s haiku as encapsulating D.H. Lawrence’s theory of ‘spirit of place’ in which each country has its own peculiar identity that shapes its inhabitants. It argues that Mungoshi’s work evokes this ‘spirit’, the distinctive, exclusive essence of Zimbabwe: the land and its people
Growing Up with Maya Angelou and Sindiwe Magona
This article compares and contrasts Angelou's “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and Magona's “To My Children's Children,” in order to examine the emerging sense of female selfhood within the larger political and cultural structures of the United States and South Africa during the 1940s and 1950s
Unnatural Daughters
The Editor's Corner
The Fellow may begin the twelve-months' residence on either July 1 or September 1, 1982
No prominent works on this page.
The Editor's Corner
The Fellow may begin the twelve-months' residence on either July 1 or September 1, 1982
Unnatural Daughters
Growing Up with Maya Angelou and Sindiwe Magona
This article compares and contrasts Angelou's “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” and Magona's “To My Children's Children,” in order to examine the emerging sense of female selfhood within the larger political and cultural structures of the United States and South Africa during the 1940s and 1950s
“A Moment in Timelessness”
Spirit of Place”. Mungoshi’s Rolling World
This paper cites Morrissey’s haiku as encapsulating D.H. Lawrence’s theory of ‘spirit of place’ in which each country has its own peculiar identity that shapes its inhabitants. It argues that Mungoshi’s work evokes this ‘spirit’, the distinctive, exclusive essence of Zimbabwe: the land and its people
Introduction
This issue of Journal of Literary Studies/Tydskrif vir literatuur-wetenskap, guest-edited by Rosemary Gray, is dedicated to works of Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri. Linear threads of utopianism, history and civilisation, language and writing, notions of reality, politics, literary aesthetics and intertextuality, postmodernism and postcolony form an interlacertine pattern that draws six articles together into coherent whole. It is, at once,…
Mythic Conjunctions in Transit
Drawing on Ben Okri's A Time for New Dreams (2011) and Wole Soyinka's Myth, Literature and the African World ([1976]1995), this article adopts a literary aesthetics approach, explaining that mythic conjunctions are inherent in ontopoiesis or the self-induced development of consciousness (Tymeniecka 1992). Okri (2011: 27) argues that self-creativity or innovation “come from being able first to see what is there, and not there; to hear what is said…
Interview with Ben Okri
Introduction First, let me express my deep gratitude to you for taking time out of your busy schedule and the public demands made upon so celebrated a writer to talk to a reader who finds your works--be they poetic, dramatic, or prose--intriguing and compelling. I can well understand why the International Pen Club has you as their vice-president. Secondly, I must tell you that I would like to use this interview as the opening piece in a monograph…
‘A lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Ben Okri's Wild (2012)
The argument begins by claiming that the phrase, ‘a clear lucid stream of everywhereness,’ taken from Ben Okri's The landscapes within, at once encapsulates the postmodern theories of complexity and relativity and evokes a cosmic dimension and a striving for Dasein [authentic human existence] that inform his poetic vision in his latest collection of poetry, Wild (2012). It proceeds to argue for the complexity inherent in the notion ‘postmodernism…
When Chaos Is the God of an Era
The article begins by contextualizing Ben Okri’s concept of reality within a traditional, cultural framework. A brief discussion of the trajectory of African writing and the standard classifications of the mode of the Okri oeuvre as either non-realist or magical realism follows. The argument challenges both appellations in light of a fairly recent interview with the author (London, 16 February 2011) in which Okri redefines “reality” in terms of a…
Phenomenological ecology in two occasional poems by Ben Okri
This article begins with a brief discussion of the three terms: the poet, ontopoiesis and eco-phenomenology or phenomenological ecology. An explication of its thrust, viz. the significance of sowing/sewing ‘a quilt of harmony’ (Wild 2012: 20), in relation to the broad yet symbiotic theme of cosmic ecology follows. The discussion proceeds by presenting a close critical analysis of Ben Okri's ‘Lines in Potentis’, a poem commissioned by the then Lor…
Fresh challenges faced on the ground by the Kingdom of the Sky
This article argues that Lesotho’s landlocked position, which inhibits trade and results in enclaves of the poor, not only leads to its dependency on South Africa, but also contributes to its instability. It points out that destabilisation remains a problem in spite of Lesotho having served as an excellent model of peaceful transfer of power in a strengthened democratic arena under its 1993 Constitution, as the country had just celebrated 20 year…
Ben Okri’s stoku , “ The Standeruppers” (2017)
This article is predicated on two principal sources: Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction (2014) and Ben Okri’s unpublished stoku, “The Standeruppers” (2017). It invokes Edward O. Wilson’s 2002 argument on the inherent dangers of the human trajectory: the irony of the survival of our own species. Kolbert dubs human[un]kind’s predatory proclivity that threatens creation, our “unnatural history”. Using Okri’s Olduvai Gorge inspired rock poems (…
Redreaming ways of seeing
Drawing on A Way of Being Free (1997) and A Time for New Dreams (2011) among other Okrian texts, this article is a discussion of the notion of redreaming ways of seeing through intuitive creativity. The argument is divided into three parts: the role of intuitive creativity; redreaming ways of seeing in The Landscapes Within (1981); and intuition or “the landscapes within”. The deployment of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Roland Barthes’s Image,…
Countering Mind-forg’d Manacles in Ben Okri’s The Freedom Artist (2019)
This article seeks to unveil Ben Okri’s antidote to the proposition that the “normal” world is an asylum for mind control. Acknowledging its rich literary undercurrent, I posit that The Freedom Artist (2019), countering Blake’s “mind-forg’d manacles” in “London”, is a culmination of Mental Fight (1999); the novel is a linear progression of the anthology’s subtitle: “an anti-spell for the 21st century”. Although aligning my reading with the view t…
Ben Okri’s Generational Protest Poem, “The Incandescence of the Wind”
The central premise in this article is that Ben Okri's generational protest poem, “The Incandescence of the Wind”, first published in An African Elegy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1992) and republished in Rise like Lions (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2018), seeks to make sense of a profoundly disturbing encounter with contemporary reality through a revisioning of nationhood and poetic responsibility in war-torn Nigeria in 1982. The argument draws on …
Unfathomable Depths
From the ‘Cradle of Civilization’ to Ben Okri’s Changing Destiny (2021)
The paper begins with a brief discussion of myths and legends, ‘the cradle of civilization’, and an outline of the BA/KA relationship, the latter a pivotal mythological concept that underpins both the generative poem and its migration into a play, seen through the prism of a 4000-year-old Egyptian poem, Sinuhe. This is followed by a summary of the 1875 BCE funerary autobiography. A comparison of the framing poem with Ben Okri’s drama, Changing De…
Art (14 works) · Literature (13 works) · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Poetry (8 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · History (5 works) · African history and culture studies (4 works)