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Record Nr.

UNINA9910814663103321

Autore

Murphy Laura (Laura T.)

Titolo

Metaphor and the slave trade in West African literature / / Laura T. Murphy

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Athens, Ohio, : Ohio University Press, 2012

ISBN

0-8214-4412-3

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (255 p.)

Collana

Western African Studies

Disciplina

820.93580966

Soggetti

West African literature (English) - History and criticism

Slave trade in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Against amnesia: metaphors and memory in West Africa -- Magical capture in a landscape of terror: the trope of the body in the bag in Amos Tutuola's My life in the bush of ghosts -- Geographies of memory:  mapping slavery's recurrence in Ben Okri's The famished road -- The curse of constant remembrance: the belated trauma of the slave trade in Ayi Kwei Armah's Fragments -- Childless mothers and dead husbands: the enslavement of intimacy and Ama Ata Aidoo's secret language of memory -- The suffering of survival -- The future of the past: the new historical fiction.

Sommario/riassunto

Metaphor and the Slave Trade provides compelling evidence of the hidden but unmistakable traces of the transatlantic slave trade that persist in West African discourse. Through an examination of metaphors that describe the trauma, loss, and suffering associated with the commerce in human lives, this book shows how the horrors of slavery are communicated from generation to generation.  Laura T. Murphy's insightful new readings of canonical West African fiction, autobiography, drama, and poetry explore the relationship between memory and metaphor and emphasize how repressed or otherwise margina