I read this amazing paper - African Languages and African Literature Cecilia A. Eme & Davidson U. Mbagwu DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ujah.v12i1.7
My argument is this: I strongly think that every African author is an individual with their own aspirations. Why would any author go through the pains of learning to write in African languages when they have a rich language like English for their stories?
I strongly think African authors are trying to do the work of the anthropologist. A novelist's job is to entertain his readers with interesting fictional events. I have never seen British authors coming together to write in old Shakespearian English collectively. That kind of English is lost and remains in old literature. Why should African languages be an exception? If we wish to preserve our languages in written form, let Historians and anthropologists do the job, not novelists.
Everyone writes in the language he believe, he belong to.
The rest belongs to the "commercial aspects" of the publishing market.
Sir, can you expound on your question? I do have a vague idea of what we should be talking about after reading the paper you shared, but I would just like to be sure.
The Eme & Mbagwu paper I shared (African Languages and African Literature) implicitly expose African novelists as having the following missions:
1. An agenda to propagate and popularise the African culture.
2. Bringing to life a non-existent, fantasised written African literature.
3. Convince the world that we Africans were already civilised and wore. clothes and shoes before the white man's visit.
4. Come to a consensus as to how African-born authors should write, how their English should be, what they should write about, and that they should even write in an African language.
The above are the goals of a historian or an anthropologist. A true novelist is only interested in weaving a rich language into an entertaining story that readers can let themselves be carried away by. Yes, a novelist uses the real world as a basis, but that is only how far they go with reality. Once you have an agenda as a novelist, how can your readers of fiction trust you enough to read your books in a novelistic fashion? We need to grow from the Achebe and Adichie gang.
This is a very intelligent and open-minded question. I am curious as to what I will be reading on this page in the next few weeks.
Let me quote from Mahji's paper: "The ClassicalSanskrit period (roughly 200 BCE. to 1100 CE.) saw the composition of monumental works such as theMahābhārata, Rāmayaṇa, and the Purāṇa, along with philosophical treatises like the Upaniṣadas and theŚrīmadbhāgavad Gītā."
My thing is, English has flourished even more than such old and indigenous literature. African writing is a European artefact (the Latin alphabet). You are, therefore, only just beginning. Let your anthropologists and linguists do the hard work, but if your novelists need to write interesting stories, they;d better learn proper English. English has developed through centuries of writing. Libraries abound with books in English.
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Majhi, L. (2024). Exploring the Significance of Sanskrit Literature in Shaping of the Indian Knowledge System. Partners UniversalInternationalInnovationJournal(PUIIJ), 2(3).
I have read great African novels, and never thought they played the role of the anthropologist. Now I do.
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