THE COLLISION OF AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN CULTURES, A SITE OF METAMORPHOSES IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S AFRICAN TRILOGY
THE COLLISION OF AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN CULTURES, A SITE OF METAMORPHOSES IN CHINUA ACHEBE’S AFRICAN TRILOGY

Summary/Abstract: Achebe, the realist Nigerian novelist, made use of his “knowledges” and fulfilled what he felt as a deep duty: he made “his people” speak in some acclaimed and highly rewarded novels in order to tell Their Truth. Achebe was fully aware that “literary texts are one of the rare places where they might be heard”, as Foucault (qtd. in Loomba 1998:38) largely stated. Thus, readers of all times are able to perceive the metamorphoses undergone by both sides of the cultural clash in the process of colonisation. This paper traces how the profound mechanisms of change gradually affected large groups of indigenous people: the social fabric of the African villages started its perpetual disintegration, their languages were replaced by the British language, their institutions became ignored, minimized, and finally reduced to inefficiency. New people and new places were born.

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