LITERATURE AND ECONOMIC DETERMINISM
LITERATURE AND ECONOMIC DETERMINISM
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Date
2009-08
Authors
ABDULLAHI, BALARABE
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Abstract
Marxism which later developed into communism has since the Bolshevic revolution of 1917
become a structure of governance in the defunct USSR. This system later spread to a number of
countries in Eastern Europe, South America and China. With its collapse in the founding state in
1991, the general assumption has been that it would automatically disappear everywhere, but this
did not happen. Indeed, scholarship and analysis from the Marxist perspective have continued to
flourish. In fact, Marxist ideology- cum communist has been applied to the study of literature in
several societies. The Marxist theory selected for this research is that of economic determinism;
this theory feels that the society is constituted by a base (the material means of production,
distribution, and exchange) and a superstructure, which is the cultural world of ideas, art,
religion, literature, law and so on. The essential Marxist view is that the latter things are not
innocent but are determined or shaped by the nature of the economic base. This research aims at
exploring this Marxist theory and its applicability on a corpus of Hausa plays. In its attempt to
present the economic outlook of the Hausa society, the work examines the economic system of
the society; this is the thesis. The challenge on the thesis is the antithesis and the resultant effect
of that challenge is synthesis.
As literature is not only aimed at delighting, the research is able to perhaps for first
time, present through a pragmatic stance, the analysis of economic determinism embodied in
the select Hausa plays.
Description
A Dissertation Submitted to the Postgraduate School, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria in
Partial Fulfilment for the Award of Doctor of Philosophy in African Languages (Hausa)
Department of Nigerian and African Languages
Ahmadu Bello University
Zaria
August, 2009
Keywords
LITERATURE,, ECONOMIC,, DETERMINISM:, ANALYSIS,, SOME SELECT, HAUSA PLAYS