Book contents
- Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature
- Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Ethical Cosmopolitanism and Shakespeare’s Othello
- Chapter 3 History and the Conscription to Colonial Modernity in Chinua Achebe’s Rural Novels
- Chapter 4 Ritual Dramaturgy and the Social Imaginary in Wole Soyinka’s Tragic Theatre
- Chapter 5 Archetypes, Self-Authorship, and Melancholia
- Chapter 6 Form, Freedom, and Ethical Choice in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
- Chapter 7 On Moral Residue and the Affliction of Second Thoughts
- Chapter 8 Enigmatic Variations, Language Games, and the Arrested Bildungsroman
- Chapter 9 Distressed Embodiment and the Burdens of Boredom
- Chapter 10 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 5 - Archetypes, Self-Authorship, and Melancholia
Tayeb Salih’s Seasons of Migration to the North
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2021
- Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature
- Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Introduction
- Chapter 2 Ethical Cosmopolitanism and Shakespeare’s Othello
- Chapter 3 History and the Conscription to Colonial Modernity in Chinua Achebe’s Rural Novels
- Chapter 4 Ritual Dramaturgy and the Social Imaginary in Wole Soyinka’s Tragic Theatre
- Chapter 5 Archetypes, Self-Authorship, and Melancholia
- Chapter 6 Form, Freedom, and Ethical Choice in Toni Morrison’s Beloved
- Chapter 7 On Moral Residue and the Affliction of Second Thoughts
- Chapter 8 Enigmatic Variations, Language Games, and the Arrested Bildungsroman
- Chapter 9 Distressed Embodiment and the Burdens of Boredom
- Chapter 10 Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The aesthetics of the self as inextricably linked to an unruly affective economy are explored in Chapter 5 with respect to Mustafa Sa’eed, the protagonist of Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North. I also highlight the novel’s subtle intertextual arrangements and literary echoes which are part of a larger symphony of mirrorings that form a recurrent principle ramifying at different levels of the text. I track the various references to Othello, Heart of Darkness, A Thousand and One Nights, and texts of the Arab Nahda (renaissance) that are widely interspersed throughout the novel. Finally, I examine Mustafa Sa’eed’s motivation toward self-authorship and the ability to fashion his own identity autonomously and in complete control both of its contingent processes and of their final product. He does this through the deployment of exoticizing orientalist stereotypes, which are rendered completely redundant when he encounters his wife Jean Morris.
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- Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature , pp. 156 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021