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Comparative Literature Studies, Volume 52, Number 4, 2015, pp. 867-869
(Review)
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boo k reviews
867
and theologians from the chapters by Doty, Boone, and Kline—although
I certainly do not intend to limit the scope of various chapters’ potential
interest for each field, and it still makes the most sense for each reader to
browse on her own. Many of the contributions elucidate the deep connections of Levinas’s work with modernism and its cultural contexts. As one
might expect, these contemporary influences are less reflected upon and
less explicit in Levinas’s writing than his more self-conscious indebtedness
to nineteenth-century literature and culture. Finally, for philosophers this
collection should provide a valuable resource of cultural concretizations of
Levinas’s philosophical heritage.
Olga Kuminova
Ben-Gurion University of Negev
Style in African Literature: Essays on Literary Stylistics and Narrative Styles.
Edited by J. K. S. Makokha, Ogone John Obiero, and Russell West-Pavlov.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. 441 pp. Cloth $121.50.
This anthology represents a valuable contribution to scholarly explorations
of stylistics and its viability as a tool to be used in the elucidation of the
literary and socio-cultural aspects inherent in African literatures and oral
forms of expression. As is made clear in the introduction by Russell WestPavlov and J. K. S. Makokha, the collection attempts to cover as much of
the topic in geographic, generic, and theoretical terms as possible, limited
only by the responses received to their call for papers. Unfortunately, there
were no scholars working on literature from the Maghreb or Egypt who
responded to this summons and thus the volume is concerned only with
Sub-Saharan Africa. Certainly, given the transformations going on in this
part of the world over the past few years, it would have been valuable for
those of us studying African literatures to have the opportunity to study the
literature emerging from here.
This blind spot notwithstanding, the book and its contributors strive to
provide a broad range of case studies, which can give the reader both a broad
understanding of the field of literary stylistics at the same time as they may
focus in on those specific works and theoretical perspectives that may be of
interest to them. Thus we have studies of a conventional if not canonical
nature such as the analysis of metaphor in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart
by Adeyemi Daramola which, though covering fairly familiar ground for the
majority of literary scholars, manages to position the analysis of metaphor
868
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE STUDIES
in a more specifically and exacting linguistic trajectory drawing on the work
of Lakoff and Johnson, Halliday and Ortony, among others.
Speaking from my own personal perspective, what I found to be most
valuable in the volume are the ways in which various authors have chosen to
approach their subject matter. Firstly, there are various articles which make
a concentrated effort to present and profoundly analyze African literary and
verbal art in its original language whether that be a Europhone language with
its particular authorial inflections such as English, French, or Portuguese, an
indigenous African language such as Swahili or Igbo, or a language such as
Mauritian Kreol with its combination of French and non-French elements
in the same language as is the case in the essay by Shawkat M. Toorawa.
Although the sometimes lengthy transcriptions and translations of these passages in the texts might be thought to be a bit tedious to those who do not
understand the original language, taking a leaf from the intellectual tree of
the great scholar Okot p’Bitek, who stated that “[i]t is important to stress that
these are my own translations, and I believe that there can be other ­versions.
It is for this reason that the vernacular had to be included, to give other
translators and scholars the opportunity to criticise my translation and also
to attempt their own” (Okot p’Bitek Preface. In Horn of My Love. London:
Heinemann Educational Books, 1974. x.), I feel that such presentations in
the original are important and useful. This is, of course, particularly relevant
in a collected work where questions of a linguistic nature are paramount,
such as is the case here. Judging from Mikhail Gromov’s essay on Modern
tenzi and mashairi poetic forms in Kenya and Tanzania, I can safely say
that the presence of the original texts for a Swahili speaker such as myself
was manifestly enriching to his analysis and clarified various points under
discussion. The only text that left me more than a bit disappointed in this
respect is Michael Wainaina’s intervention dealing with Gikuyu popular
music in which he has chosen to render the translations of the song texts in
English translation only, without providing the transcription of the works in
their original Kikuyu. Given the tonal nature and orthographic complexity
of Kikuyu (there have actually over time been various methods of rendering the Gikuyu language in print) I sympathize with the scholar’s choice to
streamline the excerpts provided but do nonetheless feel that transcriptions
in the original would have made it easier to zero in on the various forms of
discourse, which he underlines in the opening section of the study. To take
a contrasting example as my model, Iwu Ikwubuzo’s contribution on Igbo
riddles in the volume does take on the added complexity of these riddles in
their original and thus makes a profound technical study of the linguistic
aspects of these artistic works in miniature possible alongside the more
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contextual elements brought into play in the analysis. While I still found
Wainaina’s essay compelling and useful, I suspect that it would be more so
if he had been moved to include these songs in their Kikuyu form.
Having mentioned Wainaina’s work on Gikuyu popular songs, I feel
obliged to recognize and give praise where praise is due to the sheer breadth
of the collection in terms of its generic scope stretching from novels through
poetry, popular song, and on into riddles. As a scholar who has maintained
a concerted effort in my work to trace similarities across these generic
boundaries, I was heartened to see the successful attempts made here to
carry out detailed and meaningful studies of so many distinct yet clearly
related forms of expression.
The only problem that I encountered reading the text, and this only
­sporadically, is an apparent lack of attention in some cases to proofreading before the final proofs were submitted. While direct spelling errors
were rare (and would in any case most likely been identified by a standard
­word-processing program) there was a tendency in numerous cases for
authors to employ awkward turns of phrase or verbs in tenses that did not
apply to the contexts in which they were being deployed. While I understand and am sensitive to the pressures of academic work and the extreme
limitations which are often put on our time, I do feel that, given the nature
of this volume as in large part a linguistic study of literary stylistics, greater
attention should have been applied, both from the authors themselves and
the editors in charge in order to ensure that the language used in these articles
was more carefully crafted and accessible to its readers.
In any case, the volume’s positive attributes far outweigh any such
difficulties and provide the attentive reader with a broad and profound
introduction to the state of the field of African literature studies in terms of
literary stylistics. Throughout the essays and taken as a whole the authors
do an excellent job of communicating the importance of narrative techniques in building a greater knowledge of various genres and these works’
importance in transmitting cultural knowledge in African communities as
well as between such communities and the increasingly globalized contexts
through which they move.
Aaron Rosenberg
El Colegio de México