Cover -- Title page -- Copyright page -- Contents -- About the Contributors -- Introduction. Present Tension in Future Tenses: Re-writing Africa into the Twenty-firstCentury -- 1. Orality, Modernity and African Development: Myth as Dialogue of Civilisations -- Introduction -- Myth-Orality Nexus and the 'Other' Modernity -- Myth, Modernity and the Development Question in Africa -- Africa, Myth and the Dialogue of Civilisations Narrative -- Re-Reading Myth as Text -- Conclusion -- References -- 2. Requiem for Absolutism: Soyinka andthe Re-visioning of Governance in Twenty-first Century Africa -- Introduction -- Soyinka and the Absolute State -- The Beatification of Area Boy -- King Baabu -- Concluding Remarks -- Notes -- References -- 3. A Critical Discourse Evaluation of Decolonisation and Democratisation: Issues in Africa as Exemplified inSoyinka's Non-fictional Texts -- Introduction -- Theory and Methods of Post-colonialism -- The Non-fictional Writings of Soyinka -- Lexical Indexicalisation of Political Actors -- Conclusion -- References -- 4. Power, Artistic Agency and Poetic Discourse: Poetry as Cultural Critique in Africa -- Introduction -- Literary Trajectory -- Nation, Power and Dissidence -- Exile and Dispersal: Post-Nation Anxiety -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 5. African Literature and the Anxiety of Being in the Twenty-first Century -- Introduction -- Conceptualising African Literature -- African Literature in the Twenty-first Century -- Towards the Future -- Conclusion -- References -- 6. A Critical Analysis of Prophetic Myths in the Selected Fiction of Ben Okri -- Introduction -- Journey as Archetypal Motif -- In Search of the Future: Mythical Paradigms as Prophecy in In Arcadia -- Unorthodox Archetypes as Predictive Myth -- Unorthodox Archetypal Statements -- Unorthodox Archetypal Sights -- Conclusion -- References.

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