- Title
- Third World Express: trains and “revolution” in Southern African poetry
- Creator
- Wright, Laurence
- Date
- 2010
- Type
- text
- Type
- article
- Identifier
- vital:7066
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007453
- Identifier
- https://doi.org/10.4102/lit.v31i1.34
- Description
- preprint
- Description
- This article examines political dimensions of the train metaphor in selected southern African poems, some of them in English translation. Exploring work by Mongane Serote, B.W. Vilakazi, Demetrius Segooa, Phedi Tlhobolo, Thami Mseleku, Jeremy Cronin, Alan Lennox-Short, Anthony Farmer, Freedom T.V. Nyamubaya, Abduraghiem Johnstone and Mondli Gwala, the argument shows some of the ways in which the technological character of trains and railways is made to carry a message of political insurrection and revolution. The author shows that the political potential of the railway metaphor builds on the general response to railways evident in poems indebted to traditional African praise poetry. The piece also demonstrates that political contention within different strands of the southern African liberation movement could also find expression using the railway metaphor.
- Format
- 21 pages, pdf
- Language
- English
- Relation
- Literator: Journal of literary criticism, comparative linguistics and literary studies, Wright, L. (2010). Third World Express: trains and “revolution” in Southern African poetry. Literator, 31(1), 1-18, Literator: Journal of literary criticism, comparative linguistics and literary studies volume 31 number 1 1 18 April 2010 2219-8237
- Rights
- Wright, Laurence
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Literator Self-archiving Policy
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Wright, Laurence (Prof)
RU Institute for the Study of English in Africa (ISEA)
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