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Articles

Vol. 4 No. 1: June, 2016

THE RIVER BETWEEN DE NGUGI WA THIONG’O: UNE (RÉ)-ÉCRITURE LITTÉRAIRE DES CROYANCES MYTHICO-RELIGIEUSES DES KIKUYUS

  • Youssoupha Mane
Submitted
June 13, 2016
Published
2016-06-13

Abstract

The incidence of myth in the Anglophone African novel as The River Between(1975) by Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, La Riviera de vie (1988) for the French version, naturally implies the presence of African orality markers (mythemes / or ethno-religious myths) in the structuring of the modern African novel. The River Between is composed of a beautiful compilation of elements of the kikuyu mythology. The novel opens with a narration of the founding myth of the Kikuyu ethnic group as well as the mythical and cultural heroes (Gikiyu and Mumbi) who are also the custodians of ancestral wisdom. This literary rewriting of the Kikuyu mythical-religious beliefs, allows the narrator to draft The River Between within which there is an anthropomorphism (God and Nature), the common imagination background of Kameno inhabitants who devote an unwavering worship of traditional religion, to the supreme god ―Ngai or Murungu‖ who lives on top of Mount Kenya (the Cosmic Mountain), locally known as ―Kirinyaga‖ (meaning the bright mountain). According to the durandian perception, such literary hybridity that merges mythology with literary creation results in the narrativity of the myth, and enables us to build on mythocrtique, a reading grid which aims at analyzing the incursion of any mythical mode, or mythical element of a text as it occurs in Ngugi Wa Thiong‘o‘s novel.