الفهرس 
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Abstract
Achebe published his debut novel Things Fall Apart in 1958, two years before the British colonization of Nigeria ended. He aimed to write his own story to discredit the colonial discourse presenting Africans as savages, incapable of learning or practicing civilization unless taught by the European colonizer. In his novel, Achebe portrayed the Igbo society in its entirety, including its imperfections, right before the British colonization of Nigeria in general and Igbo land in particular. He displayed the sophistication and complexity of Igbo cultural and social system which the British colonization had purposefully obliterated.
Thus, through Things Fall Apart, he refuted the European portrayal of the “Savage” African and rightfully gained the title Father of Nigerian Literature. Achebe’s expressed pride and clear-sighted view of his society, its culture and civilization right before British colonization, affected the way all Nigerian writers presented their society in their literary works after him. He guided other African writers in their attempt to write ”their own story” and explore their society with its complexities, sophistication and even flaws. He gave them the confidence to do so without being affected by the colonizers’ discourse presenting Africans as savages who had to look up to Europeans to teach them the meaning of civilization. Among those he helped publish their stories was Flora Nwapa.
Flora Nwapa wrote her debut novel, Efuru, in the early sixties. Achebe helped her publish it later on in 1966. She was the first Nigerian woman to write and publish fiction. Thus, she was the first Nigerian female to ”Come to Voice” which is a form of resistance because black women have been historically silenced in Eurocentric patriarchal discourse. By publishing her novel, Nwapa encouraged other female writers to break through the western patriarchal tradition of silencing women. Nwapa herself as well as the titular heroine of her novel validated pre-colonial Igbo society belief in women’s inherent strength, power and ability to achieve.
This thesis is a re-reading of Nigerian post-colonial fiction as dramatically refuting British colonization and the western imperial and patriarchal values it imposed on the Nigerian society and its culture, through Nwapa’s Efuru re-writing of Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Nwapa’s novel presents an overt treatment of these western patriarchal values. On the other hand, she was very subtle in her rejection of the imperial values in contrast to Achebe’s overt renunciation of the colonial project in his novel. Her subtle reference to the Igbo Woman’s War through her debut novel is a feminist challenge to male nationalism as well as colonial values.
Research Questions
The thesis will explore why Things Fall Apart occupies its distinctive position in Nigerian literary history and how Nwapa re-writes Achebe’s presentation of Igbo society, whose tradition is being made in Africa, how it should be represented, how Nwapa re-writes ”Her-story” against the male ”His-story” Achebe presents in his novel and, finally, what female empowerment strategies Nwapa employs in her debut novel.
Hypothesis:
Critics usually explore Things Fall Apart as only a post-colonial novel answering back at the colonizer discourse. True, Things Fall Apart is itself a counter-discursive response to the western picture of Africans, particularly as presented by Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, thus the primary (hypo) text is itself intertextual. Yet the intertextuality between it and Efuru is just as important to explore. Achebe’s novel had a profound effect on Flora Nwapa, the first female Igbo writer. This effect is clear in her debut novel and its titular heroine. Nwapa’s Efuru is a counter-discourse to Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, a re-writing of his treatment of national and gender issues. This thesis aims at exploring Efuru’s intertextual dialogue with Things Fall Apart. It attempts to show how Nwapa rewrites Achebe’s novel, subtly treating the colonial issues he focused on and emphasizing the gender issues he marginalized.
The hypothesis behind the thesis is that when Achebe wrote his novel two years before the end of the British colonization, he felt the need to overtly resist Imperial values through re-instilling back Igbo pride and belief in indigenous cultural values even as he exposed the flows of Igbo society. Nwapa, on the other hand, wrote her novel in the early sixties after the end of British colonization and therefore was more concerned with social values than political ones. Thus, she concentrated on women’s affairs, resisting the western patriarchal values imposed through colonization though she subtly refuted imperialism as the origin of the patriarchal society she was trying to re-balance.
Methodology:
This thesis will examine the two selected novels using Bakhtin’s theories as tools for reading and analysis. It will also link Bakhtin to Post-colonialism, Ecofeminism and Womanism or Black Feminism. Reading Efuru and Things Fall Apart through Bakhtin’s dialogic and polyphonic concepts, as well as his view of the relationship between the self and others, exposes the tensions within the texts. Bakhtin also encourages reading history and culture, in addition to language itself, within the two texts. Still, he maintains a special status for literary works apart from the reality they express. This leads to his concept of folk-mythological time and a consideration of his view of the periods and regions covered within each novel. Moreover, Bakhtinian Dialogics offer diverse methods and analytical tools for reading the texts through Post-Colonial Eco-Feminist and Womanist lenses. Linking Bakhtin to the Postcolonial theory, the thesis explores how Western values, traditions of thought and literature, including versions of postmodernism and historicism, practice repressive ethnocentrism, marginalizing the traditions and culture of the colonized.
Later on, linking Bakhtin to Ecofeminism helps to explore how each writer emphasized or marginalized the voice of nature in each novel. Ecofeminism is mainly concerned with the suppressed nature in relation to the suppressed female, linking females to Mother Earth. Dealing with post-colonial ecocritical subjects as genderless would naturally lead, according to the patriarchal system, towards a ”universal” category of masculinity. Focusing on gender as a constitutive part of ecocriticism exposes how the battles between natives and colonizers have usually been represented as masculine, native women as well as nature, constituting the terrain on which the battles were fought. Thus, women and nature’s power of sustenance and resistance is reduced or even totally discarded. This will also create a natural link with Alice Walker’s Womanism.
The thesis also uses Black Feminism and Patricia Hill Collins’ three-step black feminist methodology to create an epistemology representative of black women’s standpoints on valid sources of knowledge. The three steps are: 1) include experience/ give authority to experience, 2) use of dialogue/ reflection and 3) coming to voice/ resistance.
Thesis Chapters
The thesis is divided into three chapters and a conclusion. Chapter I; ‘Introduction’ deals with Achebe and Nwapa’s legacies, a historical brief, hypothesis and aim, research questions and methodology. Chapter II; ‘National Issues’ discusses national resistance of colonial discourse through language, culture, Igbo Cosmology, mythology, folktales and literature. It also shows how Nwapa gives voice to Achebe’s silenced females through a dialogue between African male and female writers through dialogism. Chapter III; ‘Gender Issues’ explores female empowerment, mother-daughter relationships as well as women and nature in both novels. Finally, the Conclusion presents the thesis findings.