Achebe the Orator The Art of Persuasion in Chinua Achebe's Novels

Subjects:

• Literature » World Literature
• Literature » English Literature
• Literature » Critical Theory
• Multicultural Studies » African Studies

Reviews:

• [T]empting as it is, after reading Okechukwu's book, to come to a hasty conclusion that Achebe may have depended far less than has previously been supposed on Igbo expressive idiom, the focus of the book is the sign and embodiment of the gap needing to be filled in the scholarship on Achebe, one that gives force to the urgency for a study more closely attuned to the indigenous embeddings in Achebe's art.
  —Research in African Literatures May 2003

• Endorsement From Emmanuel Obiechina, Ph. D.
  Langston Hughes Professor of English, African and Africa-American Studies
  University of Kansas: Christina Okechukwu's book, Achebe the Orator: The Art of Persuasion in Chinua Achebe's Novels, has shown once again that there is no end to the possibilities that the works of a great novelist like Chinua Achebe could open to a perceptive literary critic. Dr. Okechukwu has demonstrated convincingly that Achebe's eminence as a novelist comes as much out of his superb grasp of the art and practice of oratory as from the persuasive, down-to-earth language of his characters. Here is an excellent work that traverses a less frequented critical terrain and which immensely reinforces the ever growing body of Achebe scholarship.
• Endorsement From Simon Gikandi
  Robert Hayden Professor of English Language and Literature
  The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: Although Chinua Achebe was one of the first African writers to incorporate elements of his traditional oral culture into his novels, literary critics have not always been able to make orality and oratory the focus of their study of Achebe's works, nor have they always recognized the extent to which the power of his novels depends on his mastery of rhetorical effects. Chinwe Okechukwu's book is the first one to make rhetoric in general and oratory in particular the code for understanding Achebe's major works. Professor Okechukwu has written a book that will force us to reconsider both the source and nature of Achebe's art and the breadth and depth of his imagination.
• Endorsement From Ezenwa-Ohaeto
  author of Chinua Achebe: A Biography: Chinwe Okechukwu in Achebe the Orator carves a niche of herself through an exegesis of Chinua Achebe's fiction from the dimension of rhetoric. She painstakingly examines the prominent features of the multifaceted rhetoric which Achebe employs in the narration of the stories. The study draws on her personal knowledge as well as the significant socio-cultural and communally available knowledge of the African peoples in order to empahsize the rheori of oral rhythms, the rethoric of cultural connotations and the rheotric of political eruptions as well as the varigated levels of conflicts in the novels. The argument is refreshing, original and rewarding. This is a study that widens the intellectual responses to African Literature because it demonstrates the infinite possibilities of the scholarship on Chinua Achebe.
• Endorsement From Tanure Ojaide, Ph. D.
  Professor of African-American and African Studies
  The University of North Carolina at Charlotte: This study of Chinua Achebe's novels is markedly different in a very positive way--addressing the ramifications of the renowned author's use of rhetoric. Drawing exhaustively from forms of rhetoric from classical Greek to modern times and with deep knowledge of traditional Igbo African oratory. Christina Okechukwa has done a landmark study of Achebe's fictional works in a most enlightening scholarly way. Every serious student or scholar of African, comparative, postcolonial, and world literatures should be appreciative of Okechukwu's effort for bringing fresh insights into these works. Achebe the Orator: The Art of Persuasion in Chinua Achebe's Novels raises Achebe Studies to an aesthtic height that validates the author as a consummate verbal artist of local and universal appeal.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Chinua Achebe and the African Novel
• Audience and Oratory: Things Fall Apart
• Oratory and Social Responsibility: Arrow of God
• Locale and Argumentation: No Longer at Ease
• The Rhetoric of Governance: A Man of the People
• The Rhetoric of Military Intervention in Politics: Anthills of the Savannah
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Appendix I: Historical Trajectory
• Appendix II: Pertinent Rhetorical Theories
• Index