Displacement, identity and fictional formation in selected recent Zimbabwean novels.

Primorac, R, 2003. Displacement, identity and fictional formation in selected recent Zimbabwean novels. PhD, Nottingham Trent University.

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Abstract

The thesis analyses narrative displacement in relation to identity construction and fictional formation in selected recent Zimbabwean novels in English: Chenjerai Hove's BJones (1988), Shadows (1991) and Ancestors (1996); Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (1988); Nozipo Maraire's Zenzele (1996); Shimmer Chinodya's Harvest of Thorns (1989); Alexander Kanengoni's Echoing Silences (1997) and Yvonne Vera's Nehanda (1993), Without a Name (1994), Under the Tongue (1996), Butterfly Burning (1998) and The Stone Virgins (2002). Chapter One problematises the concept of fictional formation, and argues that these twelve novels - published in English after Zimbabwe's independence, and known and acclaimed both locally and internationally - are a key part of the continuity of the Zimbabwean pre-independence 'non-axiological' novelistic formations. The thesis understands 'displacement' as a narratively-constructed movement across a boundary, and argues that identities produced by narrative fictional texts are closely bound up with the manner in which the texts construct such movement, and therefore also with the models of space-time that they bring into being. Chapters Two and Three problematise the notion of the textual boundary, and argue that semantic boundaries constructed by novels are always spatial, but that they are never only spatial - in other words, that novelistic space-times are inseparable from novelistic ideologies. Chapter Two situates the theoretical apparatus adopted by the thesis in relation to the existing critical frameworks for the reading of Zimbabwean fiction, while Chapter Three outlines a model of the wider intertextual/social context against which Zimbabwean fictional space-times may be viewed. Chapters Four, Five, Six and Seven analyse displacement and narrative space-times in the novels themselves, grouping them according to chronology, the authors' gender and the spatio-temporal structuring of their narrative worlds. Among the concluding remarks contained in Chapter Eight is the view that these recent Zimbabwean novels may be read as expressions of the lack of certain basic spatio-temporal rights in post-independence Zimbabwe.

Item Type:	Thesis
Creators:	Primorac, R.
Date:	2003
ISBN:	9781369316407
Identifiers:	Number Type PQ10183439 Other
Divisions:	Schools > School of Arts and Humanities
Record created by:	Jeremy Silvester
Date Added:	25 Sep 2020 13:42
Last Modified:	07 Sep 2023 10:33
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/40943

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