ENGLISH LANGUAGE

LITERATURE FROM
WESTERN AFRICA
1. Historical and Social elements
2. Main features
3. A particular case: Nigerian Literature
Historical and Social elements
• The colonial division of the
territories: the scramble of
Africa (Berlin Conference:
1884-5)
• Cross-culturalization:
traditional and local
cultures+ colonial literary
frame.
• Linguistic variety: English
as lingua franca.
• English-speaking countries
in West-Africa: The
Gambia, Sierra Leone,
Ghana, Nigeria, and
Cameroon (English part).
Main features
• The richness of
folktales : orature.
• Epic tradition: griots
(traditional bards).
• Colonial literature:
Africa and the Africans
as setting (Conrad,
Cary, Greene, …):
Eurocentricism.
• The Question of
Language:
• Afrocentricism:
Africanization of English.
• “The price a world language must
be prepared to pay is submission
to many kinds of use. The African
writer should aim to use English
in a way that brings out his
message best without altering
the language to the extent that
its value as a medium of
international exchange will be
lost. (…) But it will have to be a
new English, still in full
communion with its ancestral
home but altered to suit its new
African surroundings” (Achebe,
Chinua. Quoted by Walder, 1998:
52)
• Accepting a language means
accepting its values too” (Ngugi
wa Thiong’o, 1968)
A particular case: Nigerian
Literature
• The most populated country in Africa. (One hundred million
people)
• More than 250 languages and different ethnic groups: Yoruba
and Ibo (South), Hausa (North) and other ethnical groups.
• A continuous political conflict: Independence in 1960; Civil
War (1967-1970); Military Regimes.
• Natural resources: oil, palm-oil, cocoa, ….

• Oral literature.
• Literature written in vernacular languages.
• Literature written in English.
Nigerian Literary Frame
• Origins: Black Victorians (Olaudah Equiano).
• The interpreters and the missionary schools.
• Onitsha Market Pamphlets.
• Ibadan University College (1947): Black Orpheus and The Horn.
• Mbari Club (1961-63): “Mbari is an artistic ‘spectacular’
demanded of the community by one or other of its
primary divinities, usually the Earth goddess (…)”.
Onitsha Market Pamphlets
• Unexpensive texts
• Romance and Love
Stories
• Self help texts
• Popular writers
• Cyprian Ekwensi:
When Love Whispers
• Broken
English/Pidgin
English
Nigerian Poetry
• Poets are familiarized with English language and the Anglo-
Northamerican Tradition.
• Topics: the History of Africa, the encounter with the colonizer,
the cyclical journey, and the experience of the Biafran War.
• Poets: Christopher Okigbo (1932-1967), Pol Ndu (1940-1976),
John Pepper Clark-Bekeredemo (1935-), and Wole Soyinka
(1934).

Practical Session: “The Passage” by Christopher Okigbo

Nigerian Theatre
• Topics: tradition vs. modernity, social relationships, political
issues, and traditional elements from local cultures.
• Opera Yoruba:
• brilliant sense of mime, colourful costumes, and traditional
drumming, music, and folklore.
• fantastic folktale, the farcical social satire, and the historical or
mythological account derived from oral tradition.
• No normative performance structure.

• Playwrights: James Henshaw (1924-), John Pepper Clark-

Bekeredemo (1935-), Wole Soyinka (1934), Ola Rotimi (1938)
and Femi Osofisan (1946).
Nigerian Fiction
• Different waves of Nigerian Fiction associated to the history of
the country: (Pre-independence, Independence,
Post-independence).
• English + Nigerian pidgin English.
• Oral and traditional storytelling.
• Historical, cultural, social, and religious issues.
• Tradition vs. Modernity.
• The Female Question.
Pre-independent Period
• The first writers marked a path to the other writers as they
were pioneers.
• Cyprian Ekwensi (1921) and the Onitsha Market: People of
the City (1954) and Jagua Nana (1961).
• Amos Tutuola (1920) and self-education: The Palm-Wine
Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead’s
Town (1952).
• Chinua Achebe (1930-2013): the son of a catechist and the
chronicler of Ibo people: Things Fall Apart (1958) and
Arrow of God (1964).
Independent Period
• The writers created a literature where they portrayed the
values and the contradictions of the new political situation.
• Wole Soyinka (1934): A truthful depictor of Contemporary
Nigeria: The Interpreters (1965) and Aké, or The Days of
Childhood .
• Elechi Amadi (1934) and the supernatural: The Concubine
(1966).
• Nigeria’s War novels: ‘a still lingering ‘war consciousness’
(Amuta, 1983: 83)
• Biafra Free State vs. Nigeria Federal Government (1967-70)

Practical Session: ‘Girls at War’ by Chinua Achebe

Post-independent Period
• The problems that now face not just Nigeria but the entire
continent.
• Afrocentric to reach a wider audience in the country.
• Buchi Emecheta (1944) and the female African Question:
Second Class Citizen (1974), The Joys of Motherhood
(1977), Kehinde (1994).
• Ben Okri (1959) and Transcultural Writing: The Landscapes
Within (1981) and The Famished Road (1991).
Coda
• The new Nigerian writers cope with their past but flee away
from the old dichotomies.
• Chimamanda Adichie (1977-) and the history of her ancestors:
Half of a Yellow Sun (2006).
• Teju Cole (1975) and the contemporary migrants on both
sides: Open City (2010)

Practical Session : ‘Transition to Glory’ by Chimamanda Adichie