'Your Secret Language': Classics In The British Colonies Of West Africa (Classical Diaspora) - Softcover

Goff, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1472584090 ISBN 13: 9781472584090

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014

Synopsis

This book is the first to examine the complex and contradictory history of Classics in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria. It investigates how Classical Studies, as an integral part of colonial education, enforced a notion of cultural inferiority on African subjects, but conversely played an enabling role in nationalist expression. The enquiry is structured around three main questions: how Classics contributed to the formation of a new class of Europeanising West Africans in the late 19th century; how Classics was implicated in the ideological struggles of the early twentieth century over the desirability of 'practical' or 'agricultural' education; and how the uses of Classics changed in the years leading up to independence.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Goff is Professor of Classics at the University of Reading, UK.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1472584090
• ISBN 13: 9781472584090
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 248