The Geography of Narrative: Representations of Place in African Literature

Abstract

Questions of geography have been prominent in the criticism of both African literature in particular and postcolonialism in general, including, for instance, issues regarding the nation, globalization, and the urban. Yet most discussions regarding these geographic concerns have remained dichotomous, resulting in criticism that fails to attend to the complexity with which African authors tend to represent the places of their writing. By engaging with a wide range of work in cultural geography, this dissertation develops what might be termed geocriticism, a model for understanding such geographic issues through the relations of space, place, and scale. With this model, the dissertation argues for ways to understand concepts like the nation or the local/global not as essential categories with set characteristics, but as relationally and historically particular constructs. By doing so, we can attend with more nuance to the ways African authors represent the conditions and relations of place in their narratives.The model of geocriticism developed in this dissertation elucidates the ways each of the authors discussed in some way understands the particular conditions and locations they write about as being influenced by large-scale entanglements with the continent and the world. Despite their geographic and historical breadth and varied representational strategies, they all in some sense engage with questions about "Africa" and it's place-in-the-world, providing both multiform ways to understand the consequences of Africa's position and various alternative visions for the continent and its constituent places.