Antonio Gramsci’s Intellectuals in Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel (1962), and Athol Fugard’s My Children! My Africa! (1990)
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Date
2023
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Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
This dissertation was a thematic study conducted on the representation of intellectuals in the plays The Lion and the Jewel (1962) written by Wole Soyinka, and My Children! My Africa!(1986) by Athol Fugard. The purpose of this dissertation was to study the characters’ social functions as intellectuals, whether organic or traditional, as well as the implementation of the notion of hegemony in the plays. The first chapter dealt with the types of intellectuals found in the play The Lion and the Jewel and showed the clash between modernism and traditional values in Nigeria. Chapter II was dedicated to My Children! My Africa! and looked at the characters from the perspective of Gramsci’ formation of intellectuals, and were found to be opposites from an ideological standpoint. Our findings asserted the divergence in the types of intellectuals the characters of the plays presented, and showed a clash between characters of opposing ideological stances that try to reinforce their social hegemony. Therefore, the conclusion that we have reached was that the playwrights expressed different viewpoints of the same issue in different ways.
Description
51p. ; (+CD-Rom)
Keywords
Apartheid, African literature, Gramsci, intellectuals, modernity, organic intellectual, tradition, traditional intellectual, hegemony
Citation
Literature and Interdisciplinary Approaches