Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria, 1900-1966

Baxter, Katherine (2019) Imagined States: Law and Literature in Nigeria, 1900-1966. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities . Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. ISBN 9781474420839

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Abstract

magined States examines the significance of the law in colonial and postcolonial fiction from and about Nigeria between 1900 and 1966. The book argues that in the discrete period of the final half-century of British colonialism in Nigeria through into the early years of independence prior to the Biafran War, the law provided a key site for fiction’s negotiations with the increasingly complex realities of the colonial project. Attending to the representation of the law in that fiction provides important insights not only into the realities of the historical period but, equally importantly, into the dominant and emergent discourses and ideologies that shaped those realities. Imagined States explores a range of texts including popular, middle-brow and acclaimed postcolonial novels, as well as newspaper stories and memoirs, by both British and Nigerian authors (including Chinua Achebe, Joyce Carey, Cyprian Ekwensi and Edgar Wallace), focusing in particular on how the state of exception and ideas of civilisation were negotiated imaginatively in the law and fiction. These explorations are organised chronologically and thematically, moving from the law ‘upcountry’ (focusing on pre- and inter-war British representations of the District Commissioner), through the law in the city (focusing on late colonial and early postcolonial Nigerian fiction), to law and politics (focusing on postcolonial Nigerian representations of treason and violence).

Item Type:	Book
Uncontrolled Keywords:	law, postcolonial, colonial, fiction, literature, Nigeria
Subjects:	L200 Politics Q200 Comparative Literary studies T500 African studies
Department:	Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Humanities
Related URLs:	Publisher
Depositing User:	Paul Burns
Date Deposited:	09 Sep 2019 09:13
Last Modified:	15 Sep 2020 12:27
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/40575

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