Race, nationalism and colonialism in the African landscape (South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Ngugi wa Thiong'o)

My dissertation analyzes a range of British and African works in order to bring to light the social and political motives which influence and distort descriptions of the African landscape.; Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak have analyzed some of the difficulties and barriers involved in Western approaches to Third World literature. Western assumptions about genre, conventions, diction and subject matter prevent critics from adequately appreciating the structure, methods and purpose of Third World literature. My dissertation challenges traditional interpretations of African texts by analyzing the preconceptions and prejudgments of Western criticism.; My introduction provides a theoretical framework, using elements from phenomenology, Marxist theory and feminism to develop a broader interpretation of the function of landscape descriptions. Chapters 1-3 cover the descriptions of Africa by explorers, white settlers and African writers, showing the historical development of the image of Africa both in the West and in Africa itself. Chapters 4-5 focus on contemporary writing in Southern Africa, analyzing landscape in the works of Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Andre Brink, Doris Lessing, Richard Rive, Bessie Head and others in relation to the specific political and cultural conditions of Southern Africa. Chapter 6 examines how Christian, Muslim and African religions provide symbolic frameworks for the significance of certain descriptions of the land, using works by Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and Cheikh Amidou Kane.; By drawing on a variety of critical approaches, my dissertation shows how landscape in literature can convey a wide range of relationships to the land. British and African works have tended to be discussed in isolation from one another, yet, in combination, the social and political visions of each become clearer. Thus my thesis works to broaden the literary perspective on landscape, while suggesting the First and Third World literature can be read together in ways that challenge and revise traditional interpretations of these works.