Theories of African Poetry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4271093 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nathan Suhr-Sytsma (0000-0003-4696-107X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 581-607 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Literary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0028-6087 • E-ISSN: 1080-661X |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/nlh.2019.0058 |
| OpenAlex | W3005165950 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 12 |
Lyric theory, reenergized and consolidated as a term by recent debates, largely takes for granted a set of American and European touchstones, while African literature is too rarely considered a source for theory. What might African poets writing in English have to teach us both about lyric poetry and about the role of race in literary theory? This essay considers theories of African poetry—theories about and arising from poems—under the rubrics of animism, left Pan-Africanism, and diaspora. From Wole Soyinka's quarrel with Negritude fifty years ago to poems published in the last five years—by Harry Garuba, Niran Okewole, Tjawangwa Dema, Tsitsi Jaji, and Safia Elhillo—these poets' work is not just culturally but formally and philosophically diverse. Offering multiple modes of sensuous thinking about Africa, poetry, and race, these poems model a public kind of theorizing allied with rather than opposed to embodiment
Aesthetics · Art · Diaspora · Literature · Poetry · Race (biology) · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Comparative and World Literature · Gender Studies · History · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
Myth, literature and the African world
Wole Soyinka
Voices of Negritude in Modernist Print
Black Skin, White Masks
Lyric Reading in the Black Ethnographic Archive
Apostrophe, Animation, and Abortion
Singed Phoenix and Gift of Tongues
Wealth in Fiction
Poems from Black Africa
Explorations in Animist Materialism
A Simple Lust
On Alternative Modernities
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2025 (9) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |