scholarly journals The utilization of literary techniques in Flora Nwapa’s Never Again and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 129-152
Author(s):  
Onyeka Ike
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
New Historicism ◽  
The Third ◽  
Creative Writers ◽  
Identical Manner ◽  
Flora Nwapa ◽  
Nigerian Civil War ◽  
Literary Methods ◽  
Sensitive Issues ◽  
Literary Techniques

This research investigates the utilization of literary techniques in two Nigerian historical fictions: Never Again by Flora Nwapa and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie. Nwapa and Adichie are two creative writers belonging to two different generations of Nigerian writers. While the former is of the first, the latter is of the third generation. In their two different novels in focus, it is observed that they deployed diverse literary techniques in variegated fashions to achieve the same goal – creating fictional works that deal with the sensitive issues of the Nigerian Civil War. Using new historicism (NH) as its theoretical anchor, this study uses historical-analytic and literary methods to posit that no two creative writers apply literary techniques in an identical manner even when their subject matter is the same. Rather, the deployment of literary tools is usually a function of talent, training, idiosyncrasies, orientation and propensities of a particular author. It is, of course, the patterns of such deployments that create and confer identity and uniqueness to various writers across the globe, such that when a section of the work of a known author is read, his or her name comes to mind. Using New Historicism as a critical searchlight, this paper evaluates compares and contrasts the utilization of literary techniques in the two novels aforementioned. Both writers have utilized literary elements in various ways to foreground and portray the cancerous issues of corruption, ethnicity, nepotism and avarice – the issues that led to the unfortunate and devastating Civil War, and till today continues to limit the progress of Nigeria. Keywords: Literary techniques, NH, Never Again, Nigerian Civil War, Half of a Yellow Sun

scholarly journals Grief, resurrection, and the Nigerian Civil War in Isidore Diala’s The Lure of Ash

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Solomon Awuzie
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Rural World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Nigerian Civil War ◽  
War Experience

As part of the third generation of Nigerian poetry, Isidore Diala’s The Lure of Ash focuses on the Nigerian Civil War experience of 1967–1970, the grief associated with it, and the resurrection of the Biafran agitation. Being a collection that is derived from the rural world of the Igbo cosmology, Diala’s The Lure of Ash portrays the Nigerian Civil War in a sensuous and emotive tone. It accounts for the poet’s belief in the regeneration of the lives of the dead Biafran soldiers. The symbols of fire and ash are significant for interpreting the poet-speaker’s grief in the collection. The collection also succeeds in painting a picture of the Nigerian Civil War experience where the bitter memory of the war resonates, while representing poetry as the healer of the pain and wounds of the war.

Problems of Interactions of the White Army Commanders with Separatist Governments of South Russia in A. I. Denikin’s ‘Defamation of the White Movement’

2018 ◽  
pp. 1149-1162
Author(s):  
Konstantin N. Kurkov ◽  
◽  
Alexander V. Melnichuk ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
The South ◽  
National Interests ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Imperial Germany ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Sensitive Issues ◽  
Regional Interests

The article studies some of the more complicated and sensitive issues of the Civil War in the South of Russia – relations of the Armed Forces of South Russia with the Krai governments of the Don and the Kuban and separatist movements as an important factor in the Whites’ defeat in the South of Russia. Both issues are covered in ‘Defamation of the White Movement,’ one of the last works of General A. I. Denikin. Its manuscript has been introduced into scientific use by the authors. Commanders and military authorities of the Volunteer Army with A. I. Denikin at its head were not tied down by regional interests and could pursue national interests in their policy in order to restore an all-Russian unity destroyed by the revolution. Regional concerns of the Don, Kuban, Little Russian, Caucasian independentists were in direct conflict with the national tasks that the Volunteer Army and the Armed Forces of South Russia strove to solve. Unlike the Don Ataman P. N. Krasnov, who was forced to cooperate with the occupation authorities of Imperial Germany, whose troops had occupied the territory of the Great Don Army for the most of 1918, and unlike other regional administrators in the German-occupied territories, the Whites did not cooperate with the occupiers and at times counteracted their anti-Russian policy. Denikin's propaganda successfully used this fact to fall back on traditional patriotic sentiments and to eat away at the Kremlin regime’s support. Centrifugal tendencies in the South of Russia did not allow the Volunteers to consolidate anti-Bolshevik forces and made an armed resistance to the Bolsheviks impossible. Hence A. I. Denikin’s uncompromising stand on separatist aspirations of independentists. In his view, it was the separatists’ activities in different regions of the former Russian Empire that hindered the successful offensive of the armed forces of South Russia, for instance, on the Moscow direction. Internal dissent was exacerbated by intervention of foreign forces – German occupation forces, the Allied Intervention, and active Bolshevik influence on the outskirts of the former Empire. The article compares Denikin’s text with testimonies of contemporaries and writings of historians. Thus, the authors have been able to show that his slender work reliably and accurately recreates the complex and dramatic situation, which led to the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Civil War.

THE BRITISH PRESS AND THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR

1972 ◽  
Vol 71 (285) ◽  
pp. 408-426 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. B. AKINYEMI
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Nigerian Civil War ◽  
British Press

ARTERIOGRAPHY IN BATTLE INJURIES OF THE NIGERIAN CIVIL WAR

1970 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 143-151
Author(s):  
S. B. LAGUNDOYE ◽  
G. A. A. OYEMADE
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Nigerian Civil War ◽  
Battle Injuries

Biafra and Abuse of Power in I.N.C. Aniebo’s Rearguard Actions

Matatu ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-292
Author(s):  
Obari Gomba
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Nigerian Civil War

Abstract The Nigerian civil war has left a lasting impact on the politics of Nigeria. It has also provided material for I.N.C. Aniebo’s Rearguard Actions. Given the prior success of his novel The Anonymity of Sacrifice, this collection of short stories expands his creative portfolio on the subject of war. Over and above the predilection of Biafran discourse for blaming others for Biafra’s failure, Aniebo’s depiction of the war calls attention to the failings of Biafra itself. On the strength of Aniebo’s stories, this paper seeks to examine the nature of the abuse of power in Biafra and to show how such abuse helped precipitate the collapse of the breakaway nation-state.

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