1. Picking a short story from either the Feast of Flowers or Bruner's anthology of African Women Writers explain how it relates to Anthills of the Savannah and The Slave Girl in terms of (a) theme, (b) technique (imagery, setting, characterization, style, ethos, and so on), and (c) some aspect of the religious, historical, or political context. 4-5 pages.
2. Answer one of the following in an essay of 4-5 pages:
A. Discuss the role of childhood in Swift, Emecheta, and Soyinka.
B. Discuss change, modernization, and cultural encounters in Saro-Wiwa, Soyinka, and Swift. Again, be as specific as possible.
Hints: (1) Since these essays should demonstrate the breadth as well as depth of your knowledge of texts read this far in the course, please do not repeat materials. (2) To make your point include and examine appropriate passages from the works you discuss. (3) Not all the relations you discover or create will turn out to be obvious ones, such as matters of influence or of analogous ideas and techniques. Some may take the form of contrasts or oppositions that tell us something interesting about the authors, literary forms, or postcolonial literatures anc cultures. Others, particularly matters of context, may require you to use the materials in the web to formulate an hypothesis. In many cases the web provides the materials to create an answer but not an answer itself. (4) Make certain you distinguish theme from subject; if you're not clear on the difference for this assignment, see me. (5) Provide the author and title of any hypertext or other materials from which you quote or draw. Do not use footnotes but include this information within the text in the following form: (John Smith, "Characterization in Soyinka and Gaskell," Postcolonial Web). Save the URLs, which you'll add when we put your work in the PoCo Web.
