Care and Crisis in Chinua Achebe's Novels (Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature)

This book is a new study of Chinua Achebe’s novels in which they are read as works of literary art, as literary works are studied and discussed within the discipline of literary studies and criticism. A central concept, care, which is a humane value, is found to run in the texts, and is the crux of the test that the major characters are subjected to. What challenges them as things to be taken care of through concern may be a human being in a dire circumstance, as with Ikemefuna (__Things Fall Apart__), the human group itself exposed to famine in what should be harvest time (__Arrow of God__), or the state which needs to be brought to its proper being, as Heidegger would say (__No Longer at Ease__ and __A Man of the People__), or human suffering calling to be relieved (__Anthills of the Savannah__). The novels are all in the tragic mode, because intervention is under some kind of interdiction. Table of Contents 1: Introduction: Renewed Concerns Theories and Approaches Textual Symbolism No Longer a Tribe 2 Chinua Achebe’s Major Literary Productions Foundational Works of a Tradition The Literary Work in the Field of Perception Re-reading Achebe 3: Rootedness: The Father’s Field of Control Tribesman Ancestral Rule versus Theocracy Story Events Rendered a Pure Present A Man Belongs to His Fatherland Structures Upturned and Reset 4 A New Language’s Reference Index Visitations Settling and Resettling Existences Tragic Loss: New Beginnings The Clan: Continuity and Change Ethics and Politics Osu, the Ancestors, Loss 5 Resemblances, Refigurations New Critical Discoveries Mythical Action Tribal Non-Affiliation: Sam Finds a Vacuum High-Souled Individuals 6 Involvement under the Ethics of Care Solidarity: The Call of Care Care Structure in the Lifeworld’s Native Soil Absent a Shared Lifeworld 7 Exercise of Ethical Being To Be Brought to Its Being Depths of Discourse Post-Tribal Sense Postscript: Optimistic Postcoloniality Works Cited Index