Giambatista Viko; ou, Le viol du discours africain: An MLA Text Edition

by Georges Ngal, David Damrosch (Editor)

Overview

Georges Ngal's pathbreaking satire Giambatista Viko explores the vexed relations between metropolitan centers and peripheral former colonies through its titular antihero, an African professor at an African studies institute divided between European-focused cosmopolitans and Africanists. Struggling to write the great African novel and subject to abuse, Viko realizes he can no longer separate the African and the European parts of his multilayered, African francophone culture. Viko's fate is a warning about the perils of artistic creation in a world where power is not shared. Part of the wave of African novels of the 1960s and 1970s that grappled with the disenchantments of decolonization, Giambatista Viko can be read at once as a Congolese novel, a francophone novel, and a work of world literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781603295826
Publisher:	Modern Language Association
Publication date:	03/25/2022
Series:	Texts and Translations , #39
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	857 KB
Language:	French

About the Author

David Damrosch is Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, director of the Institute for World Literature, and past president of the American Comparative Literature Association. His books include What Is World Literature? (2003), Teaching World Literature (2009), and Comparing the Literatures: Literary Studies in a Global Age (2020).

Editorial Reviews

"A challenging and overlooked work, accompanied by a perceptive and clear introduction that provides a nimble synthesis of the work's historical and political contexts. . . . Viko has the potential to become a regular feature of syllabi for years to come." —Tobias Warner, University of California, Davis

From the Publisher