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Atolagbe, Olusegun

University of British Columbia

My thesis engages anew with the representation and storyworld of Lagos in two major contemporary Nigerian city novels. Since 1954 to the present, the ways in which Lagos has manifested in literary imagination have often given it a larger-than-life presence. Scholarly debates around the spatial representation of Lagos have led to a number of affective approaches, which focus on structures of entropy, estrangement, and the ungraspable. In contrast, the twenty-first-century city novels explored in this thesis present a distinct narratological shift. Adopting the socio-spatial dialectic phrase “knowing one’s place” to read Everyday is for the Thief (2007) by Teju Cole and Welcome to Lagos (2017) by Chibundu Onuzo, this thesis offers a spatio-temporal aesthetic practices of "Orientation" and "Participation" as a strategy and tactic, respectively, for readers to think with Lagos city novels and African cities. My MA thesis begins with the introduction, where I regard the notion of knowing one’s place as an appreciation of the possibilities and potential of the urban built environment, as well as a reading process. I also define the concepts of orientation and participation here. The first research chapter, titled “Orientation,” focuses on Teju Cole’s novel to investigate how the narrator is immersed in the psychogeography of Lagos. Through a spatial orientation of the city’s signs, symbols, taxis, places, buildings, and individuals, the narrator finds their way in the labyrinth of Lagos. “Participation” is the second research chapter, where I turn to Chibundu Onuzo’s novel. Here, I show how five diverse characters collectively interact with the city of Lagos through autogestion and participatory practices. Finally, the concluding section, from the angle of “Lagos Thought,” reflects on my interdisciplinary analysis of the two city novels to answer: what does it mean to think with the city, and how can location be used to the best advantage of a story? Ultimately, my work contributes to the narratology and representations of Lagos novels in the twenty-first century. Offering the ideas of orientation and participation, I propose them as urban thought to inquire Lagos city novels.

Text

2025-04-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/90865

English

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/