Orality in Rebeka Njau's The Sacred Seed

Abstract

This paper focuses on Rebeka Njau's latest novel The Sacred Seed (2003), examining the way the author uses elements of orality in her novel to bring out a form of dialogism between the traditional African epoch and contemporary times. In so doing, the writer manages to re-work the orthodox gothic mode while retaining the psychosexual archetypes prevalent in the feminist gothic tradition. This paper will exploit concepts propagated by such critics as Mikhail Bakhtin, Eileen Julien, Abiola Irele, and Ian Duncan.