On the Sacred in African Literature

MARK MATHURAY is at present a lecturer in the English Department of Royal Holloway, University of London, UK, where previously he held a Leverhulme Early Careers Research Fellowship. He studied and taught at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and received a PhD from Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. He has published various articles on religious discourses in African literature.

• Introduction PART I: DIRECTIONS Realising the Sacred: Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God Dramatising the Sacred: Wole Soyinka's 'The Fourth Stage' and Kongi's Harvest Politicising the Sacred: Ngugi wa Thiong'o's The River Between PART II: INDIRECTIONS Sacred Realism: Ben Okri's The Famished Road The Stalled Sublime: J.M. Coetzee's Foe Conclusion: The Political as Tragic Effect Notes Works Cited Index

'Mathuray offers a new point of entry to debates on spirituality: his study seeks to introduce into the field of African literary criticism the concept of the 'sacred'. This is an innovative move, the aim of which is to offer alternative readings of the tired binaries of 'myth/history' and the accompanying literary dualism of 'realist/mythopoetic' fiction...Furthermore, by utilising the concept of the sacred as a working tool, Mathuray finds intriguing similarities between authors such as Achebe, Soyinka, Ngugi, Okri and Coetzee, authors who - according to 'secular' literary criticism - do not have anything in common as regards representations of political power and authority.' - Ileana Dimitriu, Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa'Mathuray pursues this worthy and timely project methodologically through a close focus on five Anglophone African works, with supportive reference to others and a significant reliance on authorities from a variety of disciplines across the breadth of the humanities.' -Graham Pechey, Cultural Critique