Shifting Narrative Styles in The Fiction of Timothy Wangusa and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
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2023-10-13
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Abstract
This thesis examines how Timothy Wangusa and Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi make a shift in the narrative styles in their fictive prose works. It fills a knowledge gap on how Wangusa and Makumbi employ style in a distinguished manner to achieve a significant shift in use of style in their fiction prose works. The research was guided by two study objectives establishing the shift from the traditional Eurocentric styles to more African contemporaneous styles of writing for both authors. They employ autoethnography as a self-cultural style of writing African prose fiction. The study employed a qualitative research design. Research instruments included textual checklists, a close reading of selected primary texts and secondary materials, and interview guides administered to the two authors to determine their respective standpoints on several contemporary theoretical views on creative, compositional assumptions, and parameter and values. The philosophical underpinnings of the Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, and American decolonization theorist, Mary Louise Pratt, were particularly helpful, especially Bakhtin’s concepts of Dialogism and Pratt’s theory of The Contact Zone. Heteroglossia and the art of the Contact Zone respectively were used to analytically study the individual styles and styles within the genre to ascertain the shift[s]. The study established that both authors make a significant shift in their style[s] both within the prose fiction and the genre at large. This is done through deploying African orality in all forms while addressing contemporary issues. The study established that the authors were more aware of modern theories of writing and hence their expression in the fictive works is far more contemporaneous in comparison to other writers. The study recommends that since Wangusa and Makumbi adopt new and different styles that are worth exploring by other writers, and that researchers may replicate this study with other writers and their styles.