Towards a Stylistic Model for Analysing Anglophone African Literatures: Preliminary Epistemological Considerations and a Case Study

Abstract

Debates around the question of language in African literatures have been ubiquitous ever since the Nigerian critic Obiajunwa Wali famously declared, in a 1963 article published in the journal Transition, that African authors writing in European languages “[we]re merely pursuing a dead end, which c[ould] only lead to sterility, uncreativity, and frustration” (1997/1963: 333). Wali’s statement had a two-pronged effect: on the one hand, his declaration unsurprisingly sparked a chain reaction about the issue of language choice in African writing, a question that has to this day remained at the centre of heated arguments; on the other hand, his provocative assertion brought to the fore considerations about the formal specificities of African literatures in European languages. In the sphere of literary criticism, the latter development translated into an increasing interest in linguistically-oriented studies of Anglophone African works, as many commentators attempted to identify the stylistic qualities of novels, poems, and plays written in the former colonial language. However, despite this upsurge in scholarship, no clearly defined method enabling one to perform a comprehensive linguistic examination of African literatures in English has emerged to date. The reasons behind this paradox will be explored in the first part of this essay. I shall attempt to demonstrate that the causes of the critics’ inability to design an extensive model for stylistic analysis are chiefly epistemological. Put differently, I would like to suggest that the aforementioned methodological limitations originate in scholars’ disagreement, or even indecisiveness, over the source and methods of knowledge that should be used to carry out linguistic analyses of African literatures in English. Part of my argument is that these epistemological hurdles have presented themselves on at least two levels: that of the origin of