A NEW HISTORICIST STUDY OF THE PRESENTATION OF CIVIL WAR AND INSURGENCY IN ADICHIE’S HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, AMADI’S SUNSET IN BIAFRA, IYAYI’S HEROES, AND HABILA’S OIL ON WATER

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Date
2021-04
Authors
ISMAILA, Abdullahi Ahmad
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Abstract
This study deploys New Historicist Poetics to evaluate the Presentation of Civil War and Insurgency in Adichie‘s Half Of A Yellow Sun, Amadi‘s Sunset, in Biafra, Iyayi‘s Heroes and Habila‘s Oil on water. In this sense, the study is based on the argument that the previous studies of the selected texts hardly evaluated the little narrative or subtexts which add up to become Othering Practice in the discourse of the Nigerian Civil War and Insurgency in the Niger Delta. As a point of departure, the study aims to examine the othering narrative strategies in the selected texts by focusing on how they structure the little narratives into encodements of the stereotyped, the undermined, the stigmatised, and the discursively categorised as out-groups. Essentially, this study is undertaken to draw attention to the little narratives in the selected texts in order to provide a broad understanding of the discourses of Nigeria Civil War and Insurgency in the Niger Delta. Using New Historicism as a theoretical framework, the study assesses such concepts as narrative fashioning, power relations, historicity, othering practice, and epistemic violence to determine how the discourses of civil war and insurgency in the selected texts iterate stereotyped prejudices and stigma against the Other. In sharp contrast to the earlier notions of textual value by the New Critics, the object of this study is to demonstrate that literary texts are cultural not only because they refer to the world outside their boundaries but also by virtue of the social or cultural values like stereotypes, prejudices, stigmas, and other contexts which they embody. The study finds that the discourse of the Nigerian Civil War and Insurgency has ignored the embeddedness of the little narratives within the larger thematic formation which presents conflict situation in order to project the thematic trend as political persecution and victimisation of the Igbo and Niger Delta people and somewhat an ideological construct. The study uses qualitative research methodology and concludes that the conflict situations presented in the selected texts provide an occasion for the perpetuation of othering practice and epistemic violence in mainstream Nigerian literature.
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A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE POSTGRADUATE SCHOOL OF AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA, IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEGREE (PhD) IN LITERATUREIN ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND LITERARY STUDIES, FACULTY OF ARTS, AHMADU BELLO UNIVERSITY, ZARIA
Keywords
NEW HISTORICIST STUDY,, PRESENTATION,, CIVIL WAR,, INSURGENCY,, ADICHIE’S HALF,, YELLOW SUN,, AMADI’S SUNSET,, BIAFRA,, IYAYI’S HEROES,, HABILA’S OIL,, WATER.
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