THE NERVOUS BILDUNGSROMAN IN TSITSI DANGAREMBGA

Abstract

This article presents theoretical and critical studies of the character’s arc of Tambudzai, the protagonist of the novel Nervous conditions (1988), written by Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga. The analysis has its starting point in the author’s subversion of the traditional Bildungsroman and its foundations based on European novels. At last, there is a discussion on the forms through which Dangarembga uses to narrate the tensions of a coming-of-age story and what she delivers to her reading public, in a book that ties the contradictions of the postcolonial literary experience together with the work of scholars such as Franco Moretti, Simon Hay, and Frantz Fanon.