Humanities 211
(Historical Contexts, Oral Arts, Film)
Prof. Cora Agatucci
6 October 1998: Learning Resources
http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/SocSci/1998/ss-981006.html Chinua Achebe's THINGS FALL APART
Part I , Chs. 1-13 (pp. 3-88 Part II , Chs. 14-19 (pp. 91-118 Part III , Chs. 20-25 (pp. 121-148
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URL of this page: http://www.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/achebTFA.htm References to page numbers are from the edition used in Hum 211
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart [First published 1958.] Expanded edition with notes.
1996. London: Heinemann, 2000. Part I , Chs. 1-13 (pp. 3-88) Achebe takes the title for his novel from a line in a classic Western modernist poem "The Second Coming" (wr. 1919; pub. 1921), by William Butler Yeats (1865-1939; Irish). Paul Brians explains the background of Yeats’ poem: "Yeats was attracted to the spiritual and occult world and fashioned for himself an elaborate mythology to explain human experience. "The Second Coming," written after the catastrophe of World War I and with communism and fascism rising, is a compelling glimpse of an inhuman world about to be born. Yeats believed that history in part moved in two thousand-year cycles. The Christian era, which followed that of the ancient world, was about to give way to an ominous period represented by the rough, pitiless beast in the poem." Read "The Second Coming" (below) and consider why Achebe chose to take the title of his novel from Yeats’ poem. ). Consider how Achebe’s literary | |
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