Abstract
This paper aims to explore the female readers reading experiences, views and feelings of Hausa romance novels found in most of the northern part of Nigeria. This article also examines some criticism and accusations against the readership and content of the Hausa romance genre. The study applied the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt’s (1978) as guide by selecting 7 female readers within the age ranges between 22-26 years from 2 book clubs to participate in the study. The findings revealed that all the readers individually were able to reveal their varied responses, beliefs, and experiences on the value of the romance novels which challenged the assertion made by the literary critics and traditional society that the books have no relevance in their life activities which supported their arguments and personal interpretive reading stance towards the Hausa romance genre. The finding yielded four themes were emerging: (a) promoting literacy development; (b) resistance to the traditional marriage system in society; (d) enlightening females on social inequality. These findings provided empirical support for the application of the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt (1978) outside classroom contexts to understand the role of African romance novels towards female social transformation.
Highlights
Hausa romance novel is a literary phenomenon referred to as Kano Market
The findings of this study are reported in four sections: the first is the analysis of the variations of interpretive ideas on the value of the romance novels, between the interactions in their reading practices at weekend reading club discussions
In order to examine the ways in which variations in the participation of the Hausa female readers in the interpretive process might have influenced their readership processes, values and ideas, it’s necessary to identify their differences in view
Summary
This study was carried out to understand more about the process of literary interpretation of the Hausa romance novels using the Transactional Readers-Response criticisms of Rosenblatt (1978) as a tool to explore the reading experiences from real female readers of Hausa romance novels written in one of second major African languages after Swahili. For the purposes of this study, the term transaction is used in the sense introduced by Rosenblatt (1978), who describes the reading of literature as a dynamic process in which the reader and text are part of an event, rather than separate entities acting upon each other As part of this literary discussion, female readers are continuously trying to make sense of the work through various reasoning processes after their interaction with the literary text they read at a particular time or contexts for leisure and entertainment. This study suggests the complexity of the literary interpretive process and indicates that the individual readers can become more interpretive with regards to applying their views and ideas to the literary texts
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