Black African Literature in English: 1991–2001: Critical Appreciation and Reception (review)

Femi Abodunrin’s book represents an evaluation of the major works of scholarship carried out on African literature of English expression between 1991 and 2001. Since the former date, Femi Abodunrin has written the narrative bibliography of the intellectual output on New Literatures in English, African section, for the highly prestigious The Year’s Work in English Studies published annually by the English Association based at the University of Leicester, UK. Black African Literature in English brings out in a single volume the author’s first eleven contributions to the authoritative bibliography of the scholarly writings on the literatures of the English–speaking world. As he states in the preface to the book, Abodunrin’s aim in doing this is to make a compendium of reviews of “scholarly writing on all aspects of African literature in English” available to students, teachers, and researchers working in the field.

As a review, then, even if extended, of a vast array of critical works put out in a particular year, Abodunrin’s main challenge in each of what have now become the chapters of the book perhaps lies in working out a focus for his narrative. In tackling this, what he does is underline the preponderance of issues cutting across a fair average of the critical output on African literature of any year under consideration, using it to delineate a theme for his write-up. This is not always easy, of course, but Abodunrin, in the end, proves himself to be a close reader and a great synthesizer and analyst of texts.

Taken as a whole, Abodunrin’s bibliography provides his readers with information on a range of about 450 books, journal articles, and chapters in books. Spread over the eleven years covered by the compendium, this is an average of about forty publications per year. Abodunrin himself admits that this is not in any way comprehensive, that publications on African literature in any of the years covered by the book clearly exceed this. However, and because the author often had to keep to set word limit, he had no choice but to cut down on the number of materials that he works on, focusing instead on those he considers salient and critical for his purpose—which is to demonstrate that African literature remains a field of intense intellectual activities and profound scholarly debates.

One thing that a reader will readily observe while going through Abodunrin’s series of reviews is that scholars of African literature do not often draw rigid distinctions between, on the one hand, the forms and techniques of the texts they analyze and the themes and contents of the same works, on the other. Rather, the two aspects are often taken together, with critics themselves taking bold positions on the issues raised in the writings they analyze. For example, chapter two of the book under review, originally Femi Abodunrin’s 1992 contribution to The Year’s Work in English Studies, has “Orature in African Literature” as its title. Now the question of orality, orature, and/or oral tradition is linked with form just as it is with the question of the historical context of African literature. It evokes the issue of colonial disruption and its aftermath, that of the writer’s relationship to his/her roots as well as the language question in the literature, which, incidentally, is foregrounded in the book’s very first chapter, again Femi Abodunrin’s entry for the 1991 issue of The Year’s Work. Abodunrin’s review shows critics of African literary works taking unequivocal positions on the issue. For example, he presents Eldred Jones as having stated in “Myth and Modernity: African Writers and their Roots,” that eminent critic’s editorial to African Literature Today Volume 18, that “African literature [. . .] derives its strength from tribal sources in spite of arbitrariness of colonial boundaries [. . .].” On the other hand, Daniel Kunene is said to have claimed in “African Language Literature: Tragedy and Hope” that, to...