Hostname: page-component-89b8bd64d-shngb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-09T04:27:18.129Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Flat Style: Things Fall Apart and Its Illustrations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Emily Hyde
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the early 1960s two editions of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart were published with competing sets of illustrations. The first, by Dennis Carabine, illustrates a realist novel, the second, by Uche Okeke, a modernist one. Reading Achebe's iconic novel through its early publication history and for its visual images shows how the famous ending of Things Fall Apart turns, stylistically, to the impenetrable flatness of the modernist surface. At mid-century, modernist style could be made to serve realist imperatives, and Achebe's flat style challenges colonial modes of literary representation and the myth of modernist primitivism in the visual arts. This essay stresses the importance of the visual image to mid-century anglophone literature and the importance of modernist style to the poetics of decolonization.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 131 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 20 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Works Cited

Abraham, Willie. The Mind of Africa. London: Weidenfeld, 1962. Print.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua. “Colonialist Criticism.” Achebe, Hopes 46–61.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua “A Conversation with Chinua Achebe.” Interview by David Chioni Moore and Analee Heath. Transition 100 (2008): 12–33. Print.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays, 1965-1987. London: Heinemann Intl., 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness.” Achebe, Hopes 1–13.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Morning Yet on Creation Day: Essays. London: Heinemann, 1975. Print.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua “Named for Victoria, Queen of England.” Achebe, Hopes 20–26.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua No Longer at Ease. New York: Doubleday, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua “The Novelist as Teacher.” Achebe, Hopes 27–31.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart. Box 45, folder 3. Heinemann Educ. Archives, Univ. of Reading Publishing Archives. Reading, UK. TS.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart. 1958. Illus. Dennis Carabine. London: Heinemann, 1962. Print. African Writers Ser.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart. 1958. Illus. Uche Okeke. London: Heinemann, 1963. Print. African Writers Ser.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart. 1958. New York: Anchor, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart. 1958. Oxford: Heinemann Educ., 1996. Print. Classics in Context.Google Scholar
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart: The Story of a Strong Man. 1958. New York: Obolensky, 1959. Print.Google Scholar
Andrade, Susan Z. “The Problem of Realism and African Fiction.” Novel 42.2 (2009): 183–89. Print.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?” Critical Inquiry 17.2 (1991): 336–57. Print.Google Scholar
Basden, G. T. Among the Ibos of Nigeria. London: Seeley, 1921. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, Nicholas. “Basden, G. T.” The Chinua Achebe Encyclopedia. Ed. Booker, M. Keith. Westport: Greenwood, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Brown, Nicholas Utopian Generations: The Political Horizon of Twentieth-Century Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. The World Republic of Letters. Trans. DeBevoise, M. B. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Cheng, Anne Anlin. Second Skin: Josephine Baker and the Modern Surface. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, and Madubuike, Ihechukwu. Toward the Decolonization of African Literature. Washington: Howard UP, 1983. Print.Google Scholar
Chow, Rey. “Seminal Dispersal, Fecal Retention, and Related Narrative Matters: Eileen Chang's Tale of Roses in the Problematic of Modern Writing.” Differences 11.2 (1999): 153–76. Print.Google Scholar
Clifford, James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. Ed. Watts, Cedric. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. 101–87. Print. Oxford World's Classics.Google Scholar
Currey, James. Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature. Oxford: Currey, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Enwezor, Okwui, ed. The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994. New York: Prestel, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Esty, Jed, and Lye, Colleen. “Peripheral Realisms Now.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.3 (2012): 269–88. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon. “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.” Modernism/Modernity 10.3 (2003): 455–80. Print.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon “Realism, Romance, and the Problem of African Literary History.” Modern Language Quarterly 73.3 (2012): 309–28. Print.Google Scholar
Gikandi, Simon “The Short Century: on Modernism and Nationalism.” New Formations 51.1 (2003): 10–25. Print.Google Scholar
Harris, Wilson. “The Frontier on Which Heart of Darkness Stands.” Research in African Literatures 12.1 (1981): 86–93. Print.Google Scholar
Hassan, S. M. “African Modernism: Beyond Alternative Modernities Discourse.” South Atlantic Quarterly 109.3 (2010): 451–73. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.Google Scholar
Hill, Alan. In Pursuit of Publishing. London: Murray, 1988. Print.Google Scholar
Hofmeyr, Isabel. The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of The Pilgrim's Progress. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huggan, Graham. The Postcolonial Exotic: Marketing the Margins. London: Routledge, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Ibironke, Olabode. “Between African Writers and Heinemann Educational Publishers: The Political Economy of a Culture Industry.” Diss. Michigan State U, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Irele, F. Abiola. “The Crisis of Cultural Memory in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.” African Studies Quarterly 4.3 (2000): 1–40. Print.Google Scholar
Jakobson, Roman. “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances.” Language in Literature. Ed. Pomorska, Krystyna and Rudy, Stephen. Cambridge: Belknap-Harvard UP, 1987. 95–120. Print.Google Scholar
Jan Mohamed, Abdul. “Sophisticated Primitivism: The Syncretism of Oral and Literate Modes in Achebe's Things Fall Apart.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature 15.4 (1984): 19–39. Print.Google Scholar
Johnson, Barbara. “Metaphor, Metonymy, and Voice in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” The Novel: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory, 1900-2000. Ed. Hale, Dorothy J. Malden: Blackwell, 2006. 257–70. Print.Google Scholar
Kalliney, Peter J. Commonwealth of Letters: British Literary Culture and the Emergence of Postcolonial Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawtoo, Nidesh. “A Picture of Africa: Frenzy, Counter-narrative, Mimesis.” Modern Fiction Studies 59.1 (2013): 26–52. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazarus, Neil. The Postcolonial Unconscious. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leighten, Patricia. “The White Peril and l'Art Nègre: Picasso, Primitivism, and Anticolonialism.” Art Bulletin 72.4 (1990): 609–30. Print.Google Scholar
Levine, George. The Realistic Imagination: English Fiction from Frankenstein to Lady Chatterley. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. Print.Google Scholar
Lizarribar, Camille. “Something Else Will Stand beside It: The African Writers Series and the Development of African Literature.” Diss. Harvard U, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Low, Gail. “In Pursuit of Publishing: Heinemann's African Writers Series.” Wasafiri 17.37 (2002): 31–35. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malraux, André. Picasso's Mask. Trans. Guicharnaud, June with Guicharnaud, Jacques. New York: Da Capo, 1995. Print.Google Scholar
Moses, Michael Valdez. “Disorientalism: Conrad and the Imperial Origins of Modernist Aesthetics.” Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature, 1899-1939. Ed. Begam, Richard and Moses, . Durham: Duke UP, 2007. 43–69. Print.Google Scholar
Naipaul, V. S. “Conrad's Darkness.” New York Review of Books 21.16 (1974): n. pag. Web. 7 Oct. 2015.Google Scholar
Obiechina, Emmanuel. An African Popular Literature: A Study of Onitsha Market Pamphlets. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1973. Print.Google Scholar
Obiechina, Emmanuel Onitsha Market Literature. London: Heinemann, 1972. Chadwyck-Healey Literature Collections. Web. African Writers Ser. 109. 7 Oct. 2015.Google Scholar
Okeke, Uche. “Natural Synthesis.” The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994. Ed. Enwezor, Okwui. New York: Prestel, 2001. 453. Print.Google Scholar
Okeke, Uche, and Achebe, Chinua. “Uche Okeke and Chinua Achebe: Artist and Author in Conversation.” Interview by Christa Clarke. Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture 1.1 (2007): 143–53. Print.Google Scholar
Okeke-Agulu, Chika. “The Challenge of the Modern: An Introduction.” African Arts 39.1 (2006): 14–19. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okeke-Agulu, Chika “Nationalism and the Rhetoric of Modernism in Nigeria: The Art of Uche Okeke and Demas Nwoko, 1960-1968.” African Arts 39.1 (2006): 26+. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Okeke-Agulu, Chika “The Politics of Form: Uche Okeke's Illustrations for Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.” Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, 1958–2008. Ed. Whittaker, David. New York: Rodopi, 2011. 67–86. Print.Google Scholar
Okeke-Agulu, Chika Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria. Durham: Duke UP, 2015. Print.Google Scholar
Quayson, Ato. “Realism, Criticism, and the Disguises of Both: A Reading of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart with an Evaluation of the Criticism Relating to It.” Research in African Literatures 25.4 (1994): 117–36. Print.Google Scholar
Soyinka, Wole. “From a Common Back-Cloth: A Reassessment of the African Literary Image.” American Scholar 32.3 (1963): 387–96. Print.Google Scholar
Vlaminck, Maurice. Tournant dangereux: Souvenirs de ma vie. Paris: Stock, 1929. Print.Google Scholar
Willett, Frank. African Art: An Introduction. London: Thames, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
Willis, Liz. “Uli Painting and the Igbo World View.” African Arts 23.1 (1989): 62–67. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar