A New Historicist Approach to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun
Öz
In literary criticism the new historicist theory represents “a return to history.” But this turn of history offers an alternative understanding of history. According to this new understanding, history is not objective as it is reshaped according to the point of view of the person who wrote it. New Historicism refuses the idea of history as a clearly available, unitary and linear past. New historicism reinterprets the concepts of history and culture and interprets historical events in the context of power relations.
In Half a Yellow Sun, Adichie tries to explore the colonizer / colonized paradigm with the retelling of Nigeria’s history after its freedom from Britain’s rule and the subsequent Biafran War. Adichie depicts different views about postcolonial Nigeria with three narrators. In this context, Adichie offers a new historicist perspective to the novel. The novel reflects a variety of experiences that Biafrans experienced in the 1960s. Adichie is problematizing the colonizer / colonized paradigm by approaching it from many perspectives.
Keywords: New historicism, Half of a Yellow Sun, Nigerian Civil War, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, historiography
Anahtar Kelimeler
Kaynakça
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Half of a Yellow Sun. Jakarta: Hikmah, 2008.
- Amuta, Chidi. Theory of African Literature: Implications for Practical Criticism. London: Zed Books, 2017.
- Appiah, Anthony. In My Fathers House Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. London: Methuen, 1992.
- Bello, Taiwo. “Writing the Nigeria–Biafra War.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 51, no. 2 (2017): 324–25.
- Borum, Michael. “Q & A with the Author.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of A Yellow Sun, a novel. Accessed May 26, 2020. https://www.halfofayellowsun.com/content.php?page=tsbtb&n=5&f=2.
- Colebrook, Claire. New Literary Histories: New Historicism and Contemporary Criticism. Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1998.
- Coffey, Meredith. “Ethnic Minorities and the Biafran National Imaginary in Chukwuemeka Ike's Sunset at Dawn and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, Meredith Coffey.” In Writing the Nigeria-Biafra War, 477–85. Suffolk: James Currey, 2016.
- Cox, Jeffrey, Reynolds, Larry, New Historical Literary Study. Princeton:
Ayrıntılar
Birincil Dil
İngilizce
Konular
-
Bölüm
Araştırma Makalesi
Yazarlar
Gökçen Kara
*
0000-0002-6048-3644
Türkiye
Yayımlanma Tarihi
22 Haziran 2020
Gönderilme Tarihi
27 Mayıs 2020
Kabul Tarihi
8 Haziran 2020
Yayımlandığı Sayı
Yıl 2020 Cilt: 6 Sayı: 2
