Research Articles (English Studies)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10566/213

Browse

Browsing by Subject "Africa"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Border crossings in the African travel narratives of Ibn Battuta, Richard Burton and Paul Theroux
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012) Moolla, Fiona F.
    This article compares the representation of African borders in the 14th-century travelogue of Ibn Battuta, the 19th-century travel narrative of Richard Burton and the 21st-century travel writing of Paul Theroux. It examines the mutually constitutive relationship between conceptions of literal territorial boundaries and the figurative boundaries of the subject that ventures across borders in Africa. The border is seen as a liminal zone which paradoxically separates and joins spaces. Accounts of border crossings in travel writing from different periods suggest the historicity and cultural specificity of conceptions of geographical borders, and the way they index the �boundaries� of the subjects who cross them. Tracing the transformations in these conceptions of literal and metaphorical borders allows one to chart the emergence of the dominant contemporary idea of �Africa� as the inscrutable, savage continent.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    When orature becomes literature: Somali oral poetry and folktales in Somali novels
    (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012) Moolla, Fiona F.
    The article discusses Somali literature, with particular focus given to the influence of Somali oral poetry and folk tales on modern novels. The difference between the concepts of orature and oral literature is examined, and the history of print and oral literary culture coexisting in Somalia is commented on.