Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 A Brotherhood of Misfits
- 2 Blowing People's Minds
- 3 Grotesque Intimacies
- 4 Tracing the Stain in Marechera's ‘House of Hunger’
- 5 Menippean Marechera
- 6 Black, But Not Fanon
- 7 The Avant-Garde Power of Black Sunlight
- 8 Classical Allusion in Marechera's Prose Works
- 9 Revisiting ‘The Servants' Ball’
- 10 Marechera, the Tree-Poem-Artifact
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Classical Allusion in Marechera's Prose Works
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 A Brotherhood of Misfits
- 2 Blowing People's Minds
- 3 Grotesque Intimacies
- 4 Tracing the Stain in Marechera's ‘House of Hunger’
- 5 Menippean Marechera
- 6 Black, But Not Fanon
- 7 The Avant-Garde Power of Black Sunlight
- 8 Classical Allusion in Marechera's Prose Works
- 9 Revisiting ‘The Servants' Ball’
- 10 Marechera, the Tree-Poem-Artifact
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter addresses a key issue in the hermeneutics of the Marechera prose corpus, namely the author's use of allusions to the Greco-Roman experience: literature, mythology, culture, and so on. While some critics have dedicated a lot of space to attacking Marechera's use of classical allusion in his literature, others have defended Marechera on that same score. Obert Mlambo says that classical literature cannot be separated from the writings of Marechera. ‘To separate the two,’ he writes, ‘is like throwing away the baby together with bath water.’ Marechera himself dedicates ample time in defense of his use of Greco- Roman scenery to adorn his works. This chapter attempts, within this narrow scope, to identify some of the most significant classical allusions in his prose, and thereby to understand better their contribution to the meaning of the texts. That is to say, I want to question the inheritance and explore the intertextual significance of classical allusion in Marechera's prose works. Of course, Marechera offers too many allusions to the ancient western world to consider offering an exhaustive account here. So, this present research introduces a bigger project to come, which will look at all classical allusions in Marechera's writing. In the meantime, I address the most recurrent classicisms in the prose corpus, and discuss those themes that strike me as the product of an African mind trained in the classics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Reading Marechera , pp. 145 - 156Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013