A Yardstick for Measuring African WritingCritical Evaluation of African Literature by Edgar WrightReview by: Janis L. PallisterAfrica Today, Vol. 26, No. 2, Namibia: Crisis for the International Community (2nd Qtr.,1979), pp. 67-68Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4185861 .

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A Yardstick for Measuring African Writing

Janis L. Pallister

Edgar Wright, editor, CRITICAL EVALUATION OF AFRICAN LITERATURE (Essays) (Washington, D.C.: Inscape 1976) 179 pp., $16.50.

A series of essays exposing the critical problems confronting those who seek to evaluate African literature, this book's stated purpose is to discuss some of the important elements of the dialogue between literature and criticism "as it relates to modern African writing, and to provide examples of ways in which contemporary critical approaches can be employed and modified, critically examining particular authors or aspects of literature" (p. 9). A reading of the book reveals the success of the enterprise; for Critical Evaulation of African Literature provides a useful yardstick for measuring African writing, which, as several essays establish, has been and still is deeply affected by two main elements: (1) the special complexity of the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the African scene and (2) the importance of an oral literary tradition.

Wright's own nuanced essay (the first in the book) repeats and re- emphasizes these ideas, and especially asserts the importance of the living oral traditions as a necessary critical factor - and not a simple one, either, but, rather, one that presents a complex artistic reality. For Wright the literary critic must be, above all, aware of how and when the forms and techniques of the text he/she is analyzing have been taken over from the oral tradition, and cognizant of what effect these forms and techniques have on the African reader. Tutuola, Achebe and some of the Negritude writers are then examined in relation to the problem of the transmissibility of culture. Here Wright demonstrates most interestingly the manner in which some writers approach the cultural and linguistic milieu from within, while others view the scene as transitional, and still others insist upon the distinctness of the African experience as opposed to the European. Finally, Wright illustrates the problems that may arise from editorial intervention, and, against this backdrop, analyzes with deftness and delicacy the form, content and also certain critical responses to Okot p'Bitek's "Song of Lawino" and his "Song of Ocol".

Peter Young's essay resumes the insistence upon the oral tradition and the African experience of language. In Young's opinion, the African artist has been compelled to focus not on the established cultural and linguistic premises of his people but "on the distractions of protest and the heuristics of identity in the most basic sense" (p. 33). Yet he also notes that certain descriptive passages of African literature originate in an anthropological or informational motive on the part of their author. These passages can be the expression of cultural

Janis L. Pallister is a Professor of Romance Languages at Bowling Green State Universitv, Bowling G(reen, Ohio.

Vol. 26 (1979) No. 2 67

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unease and the effects of bilingualism. Young finds that in the past the African literary work has often been out of balance, and has demonstrated a lack of linguistic integration. These problems have, however, been overcome by certain writers such as Achebe, viewed as a pioneer in the technique of integrating material and expression, and Soyinka, who has "most liberated the English language from the more mechanistic preoccupations of style" (p. 46). Soyinka's use of pidgin to illustrate multilingual balance and his reassertion of intuitive response to the linguistic environment have, for Young, assured him his success and set him apart from his contemporaries. But the same phenomenon can, upon occasion, explain his weaknesses. Finally, Young's analysis of the use of language in African authors leads him to the conclusion that the need to be "local" and self-contained, is, in the long run, a prerequisite to African writing's universality.

Other essays in the book, including one on Soyinka by Eldred Jones, one on Cyprian Ekwensi by John Povey, one on the novels of Ngugi by W.J. Howard, one on Okigbo by Dan S. Izevbaye, continue - in this same profound vein - the analysis of the impact of colonial versus traditional, often oral patterns of culture and language of African literature. All insist on the need to take these factors into account when dealing with the literary products of the African continent.

One might point out in conclusion that for the specialist of francophone literature there is a superb article by the always articulate Clive Wake on the poetry of J.J. Rabearivelo. In this essay Wake asserts that the maldgassitude of Rabearivelo has been as influential in the evolution of francophone African poetry as has the negritude movement. Despite its focus on a francophone poet, Wake's essay is, however, integrated with the others in this collection by its study of the tensions expressed in Rab6arivelo's poetry between "his acquired French culture and his native Malagasy culture" (p. 155), tensions which at first appeared for the poet to be essentially irreconcilable forces in his life and poetry, but which later in his career gave way "to the more complex insights of the poet's intuitive perception of himself" (p. 157). In a sense it is somewhat unfortunate that the many passages quoted by Wake are not made available in English, so that all readers of this book might appreciate more fully the rich and sensitive analyses of this particular essay.

It is apparent that any scholar or critic of African literature must reckon with the assertions of this collection of essays when analyzing African literature, which, as the book amply demonstrates, poses a special set of extremely complex cultural and linguistic problems that absolutely cannot be disregarded in the promulgation of any assessment whatsoever.

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