Department of Literature

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Beliefs and the Spiritual World: Socio-cultural and Material Conditions of Tanzania’s Occult Fiction
(Taylor and Francis, 2018) Mwaifuge, Eliah S.
This paper examines how traditional beliefs and spirituality inform and are represented in A. M Hokororo's Salma's Spirit (1997), A. S. Mmasi's Satanic Tortures (1998) and I. Yohana's Tears from a Lonely Heart (2013). The paper proceeds from the assumption that these works expose the link between beliefs and the spiritual world on the one hand, and social and historical conditions on the other. Using an eclectic approach due to the multifaceted and multi-disciplinary nature of issues covered in the works, the paper explores how these beliefs serve as a source of the authors' materials and inform the thematisation and characterisation of their works. Specifically, the paper looks at how local beliefs influence characterisation and thematisation in Salma's Spirit, Satanic Tortures and Tears from a Lonely Heart. It argues that the authors use beliefs to account for the actions of characters and concretise the themes behind the novels’ rhetorical agenda.