附註:Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-191) and index.
Autobiographical subjects -- The gift of praise -- Panegyrics -- Genre and gender in the autobiographical exchange -- The politics of praise -- Aborted nations -- Terms of exchange -- Selfish gifts.
摘要:"Offering Senegalese women's autobiographical discourses as an original contribution to the critical debate about identity and self-representation, Lisa McNee asks how Senegalese women represent themselves, rather than asking who has the right to represent them. Selfish Gifts describes and analyzes the public spaces for verbal self-representation that the Wolof form of panegyric (taasu) and written autobiographies offer to women. In contrasting performances of taasu to autobiographical works written in French, McNee addresses important issues in literary criticism, folklore studies, and anthropology, and develops a theory of an African aesthetic of self-representation."--Jacket.
