In an intellectual climate dominated by formalistic theoretical concerns, biographical criticism may seem an unfashionable mode of academic discourse, but it is sorely needed when writers and readers hail from different countries. A text may be so completely conditioned by its indigenous environment that it cannot be adequately grasped or appreciated without some knowledge of its creator and the circumstances that prompted its creation. Biographical criticism, by studying the human face behind the text, may thus assist us in the larger task of reading our fellow man.

Included among those individuals whose lives and works are examined here are Chinua Achebe, Dennis Brutus, Cyprian Ekwensi, Ngugu wa Thiong'o, Wole Soyinka, Amos Tutuola, Janheinz Jahn and Sartjee Baartman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bernth Lidfors is a professor of English and African Literatures at the University of Texas at Austin. Former editor of the journal Research in African Literatures, he has written and edited more than thirty books on African literatures, including Popular Literatures in Africa (AWP 1991), (with James Gibbs) Research on Wole Soyinka (AWP 1993), Long Drums and Canons: Teaching and Researching African Literatures (AWP 1996), Loaded Vehicles: Studies in African Literary Media (AWP 1996), and African Textualities: Texts, Pre-Texts and Contexts of African Literature (AWP 1997).

CATEGORY

Literary Criticism/AFRICA