A NEW HISTORICIST REVIEW OF CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE’S PURPLE HIBISCUS
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Date
2022
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AGBEFLE Koffi G, koffiganyoa@yahoo.fr TREMBLAY Christian, OEP Paris France, RICHEVAUX Marc, Institut CEDIMES, France, TCHAGNAOU Akimou, Université de Zinder, Niger
Abstract
Abstract
There has always been an argument for a while now about the disciplinary frontier between history and fiction due to the complicated and uncertain relationship between text and context. Accordingly, the history of literary theory, in a sense, can be viewed as a series of theoretical battles between ‘textualism’ and ‘contextualism’ (Mojdegani, 2016), swaying like a pendulum, with momentary victories to one side or the other, reflecting the oscillation between the verbal-literary champions of textualism and sociohistorical champions of contextualism. In the light of the foregoing, this study aims at analyzing, using a New Historicism theory, the cultural and historical context of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus . The New Historicism is a modern literary theory that concentrates on how events, places, and culture within a society affect or influence a written work. The theory often looks for allusions to characterize the timeframe a novel was written. The paper studies how this novel is a vital part of Nigeria’s historical and intellectual literature as well as essential to the present day discussion of New Historicism that is greatly influenced by the work of Michael Foucault and his theories about power and discourse on the one hand, and Stephen Greenblatt’s idea of “textuality of history” on the other hand. Despite the obvious political criticisms contained in the novel, it is discovered that Purple Hibiscus is a novel about the trying period in Nigerian history.
Description
Purple Hibiscus has long been regarded as one of Chimamanda Adichie’s more linguistically, if not literality diverse, novel. As a result of this assertion, much critical works focused on the linguistic and thematic features of the novels such as language and indexing, humour and caricature, violence, feminism, power or abuse of it, religious dogmatism, social relation, right denial, etc, at the expense of the socio-political, cultural and historical disposition of the novel.
Keywords
New Historicism; historical context; fictional text; textuality, contextuality