Module description
This collaboratively taught module offers students the opportunity to examine the rich literary history, cultural context, and reputation of a single literary work: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow (2006), a comic political satire, epic in scope. By examining the various contexts out of which the novel is produced, the module will inquire into the multiplex modes by which a novel makes its meaning. We will consider, for instance, how oral performance forms such as theatre and storytelling can serve as narrative building blocks for a literary text; how language carries culture, and how the text’s original Gĩkũyũ carries over into the English style of writing; how local visual culture informs a novel’s aesthetics; how Euro-American literary genres also influence the shaping of a Global South novel – in this case, realism, political satire, and 20th-century Cold-War writing in particular; how myth and metaphor have long contributed to African ecocriticism; and how magic realism offers methods of critiquing power that enable one to imagine ways out of crippling present realities. This is a chance to thoroughly immerse yourself in one work, a luxury we are rarely afforded. The module also gives special emphasis to the skills of group work and independent research, as well as offering the opportunity to practice writing across a range of critical modes: annotation and review as well as essay.
Assessment details
Group presentation (10%)
Preparation of notes (10%)
1,500 word essay (75%)
Class participation (5%)
Teaching pattern
Lectures, seminars and preparatory group activities