EL 3803 – POST COLONIAL LITERATURE

Date : 08-04-2011 Dept. No. Max. : 100 Marks

Time : 1:00 – 4:00

“Part of the continent, piece of the main”. Explain the allusion.
“I am abiku, calling for the first and the repeated time.” Discuss the paradoxical truth and the Yoruba myth.
Ism to ism for ism is ism
Of isms and isms on absolutism. Bring out the significance of this line.
rations
will sink
with hunger
and coiled intestines
will straighten
“The cultural bomb”
Hybridity
Filiation / Affiliation
Euro-centrism

Write about the elements of supernaturalism and Yoruba beliefs as portrayed in the poem
Discuss the economical condition of the Nigerians in a postcolonial era as presented by J.P. Clark.
Identify the significance of the New Yam Festival.
Write about the role of the superintendent in Kongi’s Harvest.
In the context of Post-colonial Studies, how would you examine and respond to the issue of language?
Critically assess the ‘Black-writing’ model discussed in The Empire Writes back.
Explain Wa Thiong’o’s idea of culture as “the set of spiritual eyeglasses” and explore its possibilities in your own culture.
Write a critical response to Edward Said’s observation that “human identity is not only not natural and stable, but constructed, and occasionally even invented outright.”

III. Write essays in about 400 words: (2×15 = 30)

Illustrate the conflict between tradition and modernism in a postcolonial scenario with regard to the play, Kongi’s Harvest.

Discuss the imagery of grandeur and degeneration in the poem, “Ruins of a Great House”.

Discuss the importance of Rushdie’s The Midnight’s Children in the postcolonial / postmodern situation you live in.

Examine critically the issue of partition in Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice Candy Man from a postcolonial perspective.