Module overview
In Africa, the ideal of freedom has the capacity to evoke multiple layers of struggle and aspiration: from state decolonisation and the end of official racial segregation, to gendered, national, economic and spiritual freedoms. Historically, the novel has been a key cultural mechanism via which African freedoms were imagined and fought for. This module scrutinises ways in which canonical African novels in English have helped to engender the continent's imaginaries of freedom. The module asks you to pay particular attention to the political and social implications of novelistic form: classroom discussions will focus on how (i) character construction and character systems; (ii) genre; (iii) style; and (iv) the interface between narration and focalisation have participated in forging new and emancipatory understandings of what 'freedom' might entail.