| The primary purpose of this study is to develop a theory of authorial disavowal (which is a method of negotiating the status of literary discourses), and provide diverse exemplary textual readings from various national literatures. The study should also hopefully shed light on the texts and explore their comparative worth as presented. Authorial disavowal has to do with the ways in which literary discourses are distanced from various forms of authorial and narratorial energies emanating from the texts as they negotiate their existence in a complex intertextual world of discourses. Without a theory of authorial disavowal, originary discourse will not have a methodological principle to study it.;In the development of the theory, this study has benefited from previous literary theories from classical precursors to the Modern times. It has especially drawn from Contemporary critical discourses--"post-structuralist", "archeological", semiotic, etc. The advances that others have made are unequivocally acknowledged especially to bring out and clearly identify the contribution of our approach to originary discourse. The variety of the "primary" and "secondary" texts from English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Kanuri sources helped to diversify the applicatory possibilities for the method of authorial disavowal. As the range of the theory unfurls, almost in every chapter, literary discourses are evoked to serve as the litmus test for the claims of the study.;The notion of originary discourse developed in the study encompasses various concepts relating to intertextuality, point of view, Stoffgeschichte, etc. as understood in contemporary literary theory, and comparative Literature. The disavowalist criticism that we have developed not only organizes the dismembered field of originary discourse but provides the methodological basis for such organization. |
