The Poet , State and Poetics: a Cultural Materialist Reading of Okot P Bitek

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Ph.D. Thesis Department of English Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife The Poet, State and Poetics: A Cultural Materialist Reading of the Poetry of Agostinho Neto, Okot p’Bitek and Tanure Ojaide OLORUNLEKE, Ojo Olusegun ARP/07/08/R/0051 26th June 2012 Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: A Review of Trends in the Criticism of Modern African Poetry Chapter 3: Repression, Resistance and Poetics in Neto’s Sacred Hope. Chapter 4: Ruptures of the State, Alienation and Poetics in Okot pBitek’s Songs Chapter 5: Tanure Ojaide, Threnodies of a Postcolony and Poetics Chapter 6: A Comparative Evaluation of Poetic Negotiations by the Selected Poets Chapter 7: Conclusion The pluralism of theories has to be put on the agenda of literary studies. We can no longer pretend that we all tacitly accept the same practices in literary studies. Neither is a laissez-faire attitude any longer tenable. Literature departments need to go beyond the mere toleration of theoretical differences: it is not enough to merely agree to differ; they need actually to “stage” the differences openly [...].( Raman Selden and S. Smith, “Preface,” in (Eds.) B. M. Gilbert and W. Maley, Postcolonial Criticism, London: Longman, 1997, p. vii.) [...] unlike in other disciplines, there are no finite answers to findings in literary research; there are only contending points of view and a great deal depends on the logic and persuasiveness of the literary argument.( Oyin Ogunba, “How to Write a Grant–Winning Research Proposal in Literature in English,” in Repositioning the Arts for Excellence, Ago-Iwoye: Olabisi Onabanjo University, 2004, pp. 163–173.) [...] specific interest groups will continue to propose new angles on literary studies... We have had
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