Abstract
Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo, known for his early attachment to aestheticism and modernist poetics and for his apparent late turn to more socially committed poetry, occupies a unique place in the debates about aesthetics and politics in postcolonial Africa. Contrary to frequent attempts to portray Okigbo's development in terms of conversion from an aesthete into a political poet, I demonstrate that even at his most political Okigbo continued to rely on poetic techniques derived from T. S. Eliot and on the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy in order to safeguard his work from the encroachments of Afrocentrism and cultural nationalism.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 271-303 |
| Number of pages | 33 |
| Journal | ELH - English Literary History |
| Volume | 93 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Mar 2026 |
Bibliographical note
I wish to thank the anonymous reader at ELH for the thorough and generous engagement with my work. I am also very much indebted to the staff at Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin and Lingnan University Library for their help with archival research and to Predrag Ivanovic´ for help in deciphering Christopher Okigbo’s handwriting.Publisher Copyright:
© 2026 by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Funding
My work on this article was generously supported by GRF grant No. 13601621 sponsored by the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Becoming Christopher Okigbo: Aestheticism, Teleology, History'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
Cite this
- APA
- Author
- BIBTEX
- Harvard
- Standard
- RIS
- Vancouver