Ideology & Form in African Poetry

Emmanuel Ngara

 

The book is out of print.

Synopsis

Emmanuel Ngara's Ideology and Form in African Poetry is a single, sustained and economically-presented argument, whose underlying project is to investigate the relationship between ideology, form and aesthetic effect in African poetry. His position is a clearly-formulated Marxist one, committed to the evaluation and discrimination of poetry in terms of its social consequences.

Review

It is certainly worth reading and keeping on the shelf, not because it succeeds in doing what Ngara sets out to do but because, along the way to its unsuccessful conclusion, it provides excellent readings of some poems, organizes poets and poems into some useful categories, raises important issues, and demonstrates the limits of one ideological paradigm as a tool for the analysis of poetry. - Thomas R. Knipp, Research in African Literatures

Author

Emmanuel Ngara is a Zimbabwean academic and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has also served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare, South Africa, and the University of Zimbabwe.