Against The Current: A Review of Shadrach Ambanasom´s "Homage and Courtship"

Oscar Chenyi Labang

• Publisher: GRIN Verlag
• Year: 2008
• eBook ISBN: 9783640231973
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Literature Review from the year 2008 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: none, , language: English, abstract: Though a powerful and celebrated critic and by now a good and fine creative writer, Shadrach A. Ambanasom has a characteristic tendency of inviting his critics to the dialogue table to tell them that he knows where the weakness in his work is and is therefore ready to accommodate whatever criticism this may attract. In the preface to Homage and Courtship, he comes out apologetically to give reason for his choice of subject matter and his consciousness of the criticism that is likely to follow: Of course I am well aware that the poems may not find favour with some critics because they do not carry a ready perceptible 'political punch', the criterion fashionable these days in some Anglophone quarters for the confinement of the seal of relevance to literature. (v-vi) Then, he goes on to self defence by expressing his "humble opinion": Important and central as politics is in our corporate existence, it should not be the one and only subjected matter of our literature. In any case, it is not given to just any writer to produce genuinely good political literature. May those capable of pursuing more vigorous committed writing do so; may our our radical visionaries bloom. But let there be room for liberal humanist too. (vi)