A Manifesto for the Fluidity of the Igbo Space and Achebe’s Reconstructions in his Narratives
Keywords:
Achebe, Environment, Historicity, Igbo, Reconstructing, SpacesAbstract
This paper seeks to reveal Chinua Achebe’s verisimilitude in his colonial-era narratives: Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God. These two novels owe their roots to constructs and happenstances that range from myth and semi-myth to real-life events. These occurrences and scenes are congruent to Achebe’s fictional societies partly because of the artistry, believability, and binding force of the warps and wefts of the author’s story-telling craft and partly due to their realistic reality nature. Using the New Historicism critical theory, a re-interrogation of these seminal works will reveal a unique pan-Igbo albeit utopian world, where special characters, scenes, interactions, and revelations play a pivotal role in Achebe’s dream Igbo nation. This, in essence, is his new dream environment, a meta-tale hovering above the two linear plots of the narratives, implicit and ontologically joined but revealed by this paper.
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Published on: 13-05-2022
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