A Man of the People | Literary Precedents

A Man of the People Literary Precedents

Realistic action and dialogue and the plight of the main character acting in a corrupt world where traditional values are disintegrating tie A Man of the People to a range of modern American and British novels, and to novels written in English by other Africans black and white. The central narrating character who constantly, although sometimes inaccurately, assesses his relationship to the outside world also ties the book to French existentialists like Albert Camus, and to the pre-novel antihero Gulliver and writers of the eighteenth century satiric tradition such as Samuel Johnson and Alexander Pope. The satirical descriptions of upstart and extravagant European buildings have hilarious precedents in poems like "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot," for instance.

The backdrop of conventional wisdom provided by the seemingly superseded oral tradition of Igbo culture and the apparently inoperative Christian tradition nevertheless provide a framework by which the reader can judge...
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