The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature2007

Irele, Abiola F. and Simon Gikandi (eds). The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 906 pp. pp. The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature, edited by renowned professors Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi, has the rare double distinction of being a pioneering work in its field, and instantly acquiring a landmark status in it. It is unprecedented in its vast purpose--"to provide an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise [the broad field of African literature] as defined both by imaginative expression in Africa itself, and aspects of the continuum as represented by literature in the Caribbean and to some extent in North America." More concretely, the editors have endeavored to document and discuss the "specific historical and cultural context" in which the creative expression has manifested itself, "the formal particularities of the literary corpus" that has accumulated in the two areas under study, and "the diversity of the material covered by the representative texts" (p. xiv). In this, they have admirably succeeded.