African Literature in European Languages

Abstract

The above postulate raises critical questions about postindependence African literature in European languages. Two schools of thought have emerged out of debates on this issue. There are those who consider the use of European languages in African literary expressions from a pragmatic standpoint. There are also those who consider it not only as alienating the writer from his natural African audience but also subordinating African cultures to those of Europe. Since the attainment of national independence, the issue of African literature in European languages has been debated without any tacit agreement among the African writers. It was raised at the Conference of African Writers in English Expression at Makerere University in Kampala in 1962, but it was to no avail, probably because of Achebe's skepticism (1996, p. 379). The issue had been discussed during the 1959 Second Congress of Negro Black Writers and Artists in Rome. In its resolution, the Commission on Literature somewhat recommended translations into autochthonous languages, wherever possible, of works by African writers in French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and so on (Achebe, 1996, p. 231). There is no need within the scope of this article to get into the historical factors that landed us in this paradoxical and contradic-