Cultural Formalism and the Criticism of Modern African Literature

Author(s): Solomon O. Iyasere

Source: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Jun., 1976), pp. 322-330
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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322

SOLOMON

O. IYASERE

Cultural Formalism and the Criticism of Modern African Literature

by Solomon O. Iyasere, AssociateProfessorof English, CaliforniaState College,
Bakersfield
Criticism of African creative works by both African and western scholars has
become a major intellectual activity. Many articles have been published on
African writers and their works, and, in recent years, several journals have
appeared which are devoted exclusively to the discussionof African literature.
This surge of interest is further reflected in the fact that a number of booklength studies have been produced, and African writers such as Wole
Soyinka (a dramatist) and Yambo Ouologuem (a novelist) have received
international accolades. In short, African literature is now recognised as a
vital element in the corpus of world literature.
With all this activity, however, the evaluation of African literature is still
in its infancy-especially when compared with the criticism of western
fiction which has enjoyed centuries of healthy if stormy development - and
at the moment, at least, is undergoing all the pains and aches that accompany
vigorous, young growth. At times some peripheral questions receive unqualified attention. For example: Which critic is better equipped to evaluate
African fiction - an African or a westerner? For whom do Africans write?
While these issues have been thoroughly discussed and apparently resolved,
they are still occasionally raised in essays and critical reviews of the literature.
But of far greater interest are the lively, new problems: Should the critic of
modern African literature be 'committed' in the socio-political sense?
Should his evaluation be directed towards the weltanschauung
underlying the
works or towards the more formal, aesthetic aspects? Which approach,
western or 'African', is more responsive to and useful in the assessment of
the literature?
Most critics are agreed that the strictEurocentric approach, with its use
of western models and values, does not respond adequately to the crucial
nuances derived from the oral tradition which tend consequently to be
considered as adnexal, if not detrimental to the literature. As a result, a
call for the 'Africanisation' of critical approaches has been raised. In this
regard W. E. Abraham has urged a return to the indigenous mode of
criticism practiced in the oral tradition. Since the particularities of the
literature impeding a strict application of the Eurocentric approach come
from the oral tradition, perhaps the critical practices of that same tradition
will provide a means of dealing with these features. Thus, this short article
will examine the mode of criticism employed in traditional African societies
to see what assistance, if any, the critic of yesterday can give the critic of
today.
Literarycriticism- Africantraditionalart
Literary criticism as a self-containedintellectual endeavour is not an
activity common to the African past. It is not that there is no tradition of
refined aesthetic or critical sensibilities, nor that the evaluation of a creative
work is a new phenomenon. Rather, the fact is that the traditional African
form of literary criticism was an integral part of the actual performance.

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AFRI CANA

323
Each work was presented orally, involving virtually the entire community in
the creative process. So, too, with the criticism.
In communities where story-telling was a highly developed art form, the
evaluation of an artistic performance was given unqualified emphasis. Every
recital was followed by a form of analysis and appraisal by the audience,
particularly by the elders, who were themselves skilled in the art of rhetoric.
This integration of criticism with presentation was ever the practice among
the Akans, the Luos, the Limbas, the Yorubas, the Tivs, and the Edo-speaking people of Mid-West Nigeria.
Critical evaluation was considered to be an artistic performance, in
keeping with the traditional African emphasis on creativity in all artistic
endeavours. No matter how insightful or imaginative a critic might be, if he
lacked the art of theatrical rendition and the mastery of rhetorical techniques
of delivery, he would hardly find an audience. The same was true for the
honey-tongued critic who lacked depth of perception. In many regions, then,
the 'creative talent and the critical faculty co-existed in the same person',
and often - as among the Akans and the Yaos - the reputable literary critics
were the distinguished poets and storytellers of the community. While
criticism was offered by the producers of the literature themselves, it was not
limited to them, for the audience participated as well.
The atmosphere in which these activites took place was usually informal the after-dinner time of affair - so that the critical evaluation was rendered
in 'loose, leisurely, or unstructured form'. Ruth Finnegan's study of the
Limba arts revealed that in a creative performance the members of the
audience did not listen silently nor await the chief performer'sinvitation to
join in. Instead, those present would interrupt with their additions, questions,
and criticisms.' The practice was common not only in the expected case of
story-telling, but also in the more formal situations, as that of the complex
ijala chants. The performance by one artist would be listened to carefully, and
if another expert present thought the performer had made a mistake, he
would cut in with words such as:
I beg to differ; that is not correct.
You have deviated from the path of accuracy...
Ire was not Ogun's home town.
Ogun only called there to drink palm-wine...2

Thus interrupted, the performermight then try to defend himself by pleading

his own knowledge or suggesting that others should respect his rendition:
Let not the civet-cat trespass on the cane rat's track.
Let the cane rat avoid trespassing on the civet-cat's path.
Let each animal follow the smooth stretch of its own road.3

Since the plot and skeletal outline of most tales and chants were known to
the various members of the village community, it was not uncommon for
the chief performer's factual distortion of events to be challenged.
1 Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literaturein Africa (Oxford,

Ibid. p. I I.

I970), pp. Io-II.

Ibid.

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SOLOMON O, IYASERE
324
This critical evaluation was not limited to content alone. The formal
elements, though often buried under a web of eclectic meanderings, were
likewise stressed. Significantly, the chief performer'sskill in weaving into an
artistic whole the several episodes of a well-known tale or poem came under
attack. A critic who found flaws in the rendition of either the facts or the
techniques of composition would not only point them out, but also retell the
story from his own point of view, giving it his personal stamp. His feat of
recreation would then form the basis of his comments. This form of creative
criticism, or paracriticism, often became a kind of chain narration, a
frequent occurrence when stories were told among the Edos.
I once attended the presentation of 'The Murder of Adesua' in Benin
City. After this had been performed by one artist, another was quick to point
out the flaws of the first rendition, and then proceeded to recreate the tragic
story, giving it the following opening:
Please be patient, open your ears and listen,
Stay awake wide-eyed to the end.
I have a tale to tell,
A tale I know full well,
Not a plain tale as those
That have reached your ears,
But a tangy tale of double sorrow
Full of fits and fever
Of fate that fell Of how a noble creature was plucked unripe
By force and fraud.

He closed his presentation thus:

Here is where my story ends.
Forgive me for what defects there may be
In this tale of woe:
Not for the old knots here and there
Brought by old tangles in the broken yarn,
But for those rifts brought by my own runs.
O, Adesua, fair child of our troubled land How can I sing of thee
Without a tear
For you
For us
For all that might have been The fire darkens, the wood turns to ashes,
The living flame extinguished Misfortune falls upon the land.
Well, a tale is not a tale,
Without a word or two on how it fares;
My ears are wide open to the ground
For what errors you may find.1

The critical, at times ritualistic, retelling and reliving of the same tale went
on for the rest of the evening.
1 Solomon 0. Iyasere, 'The Murder of Adesua', unpublished manuscript.

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AFRICANA

325
On another occasion I attended a story-telling session at which 'The
Murder of Adesua' was again presented by semi-professional artist-critics,
but before a different audience. This affected the rendition itself, the critical
comments, and the recreation that followed the inital recital. When the
entire performance had ended, I asked the chief performer the reasons for
these adaptations and inconsistencies. He chuckled and replied, 'Can't you
see, there are too many old women here tonight.'
Several other traditional African communities regarded criticism as a
performance, as a unique and complete literary event continuously created
anew. Under such circumstances, consistency in critical evaluation was
impossible: with each retelling, the story was adapted to the situation, the
mood, and the audience; the criticism had to change with the tale. Thus, a
respectable critic in the African folk tradition was not only insightful in his
commentary, but also skilful in his presentation. He had to be both a
creative artist and an entertainer as his ability to please and delight his
audience was vital. John S. Mbiti summarises the situation well:
Story-telling is another form of entertainment which draws everyone in. Stories contain
singing, drama, sadness, joy, surprise, and suspense; they interest and intrigue the listener,
and a good story-teller will even sandwich jokes between parts of a story. Since the telling
of a story is enlivened by actions, the audience is entertained not only by the narrative, but
also by the facial expressions, the 'gimmicks', the singing, and the dramatic performance of
the story-teller as he tells the story, imitating amazement, old age, or sorrow, as the case may
be. Although they serve other purposes, stories are told chiefly as a form of entertainment
after the day's work."

The role of the critic in African oral tradition was thus complex. He was
not a literary technician in search of ossified precision and foreign designs or
patterns, but a spontaneous entertainer, an historian, and a wordmaster - in
short, an artist. Formal criticism was not divorced from the creative process
but enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. Critical evaluation and the competition
of a work of art were regarded as facets of the same process and, in most cases,
aspects of the same moment. This interrelationship formed the literary climate
that fosteredthe production and growth of such traditionalworksas TheMwindo
Epic, Sundiata:an Epicof Mali, and the rorubaIjala, and nourished and shaped
the creative sensibilities of the legendary poet-critic Amadou Koumba.
In addition, the practice of traditional Africa provided the legacy of
modern writers and critics. Thus, citing the Akan tradition of creativity and
criticism, Abraham has advanced as a vital foundatiori for modern African
analysis this traditional mode of evaluation: the criticism is left to the
community and to the producers of the literature themselves.2
The assumption here is that what worked in the past will necessarily
work today. But the differences between the oral and written traditions are
so overwhelming that they preclude wholesale adoption by critics today. At
the same time, I do not mean to suggest that we should altogether discard
the old forms of creative criticism. As an African who grew up in a traditional
society, and as a literary critic who believes in cultural and aesthetic relativity,
1 John S. Mbiti, AkambaStories (Oxford, I966), p. 22.
2 See
Christopher Haywood (ed.), Perspectiveson AfricanLiterature(London and New York,
1971), p. 12.
22

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MOA

SOLOMON 0. IYASERE
326
I have frequently urged students of modern African literature to consider the
oral background. The creative criticism employed in the past was so flexible
and energetic, so personal and lively, that it was eminently fitted to the nature
of the literature, the variety of the audience, and the orality of the tradition.
While we cannot simply return to this approach for an evaluation of contemporary African works, we can borrow many of its tenets to enhance the
quality of the criticism we practice today, which tends to be too dogged,
impersonal, and dispassionate.

ModernAfricanliterature- criticismin a newform

Our modern, individually inspired literature has evolved from an oral
tradition of communal, spontaneous authorship, in which the act of performance was the moment of composition. Nowadays, working in isolation,
deliberately rendering and shaping his own vision of a complex social
reality, the modern author is free of the demands, limits, and pressures of
immediate production, and can revise, collate, and edit his manuscript
before presenting it as a fixed text. Creative productions have become, for
the most part, individual (if not commercial) activities, with writers employing the impersonal medium of print to reach a wider, more diversified, and
unseen audience.
As Adrian Roscoe puts it, 'To persuade with the written word is basically
different from persuading with the spoken word and the leap from the oral
tradition to the "Gutenburg Galaxy" bristles with problems'.l The direct
interplay between audience and artist, between performance and criticism,
has become a thing of the past. Contemporary literature has become more
formal, more specific, and more complex in both theme and form as authors
incorporate their own private, charged, non-referential images and symbols,
rather than the discursive, conventional patterns of communal art. Yet, the
movement from oral to written literature is only a shift, not a schism.
Creative writing in Africa today is still strongly influenced by the literary
traditions of the oral past. As I have stated elsewhere, 'The modern African
writer is to his indigenous literary heritage as a snail is to its shell. Even in a
foreign habitat, a snail never leaves its shell behind.'2 Or to put it differently,
the African is writing in the modern world with 'one ear bent to the sleeping
centuries along the dark road of time'. Consequently, mature writers, such
as J. P. Clark, Wole Soyinka, Yambo Ouologuem, Ayi Kwei Armah, and
Amos Tutuola, who have produced works of significance, have attached
themselves to their own literary heritage in order to give internal integrity
and unique form to their fiction.
Thus, the native character of the literature, the 'habit of the works', must
be considered in order to determine the nature of the criticism to be applied,
especially when this must evolve alongside the literature. A scholar does not
merely use a critical technique, but frequently spends a good deal of time
reshaping and refining this in response to the new creative challenges
encountered. Only through the employment of an appropriate approach can
1 Adrian
Roscoe, Mother is Gold: a study in West African literature(London, 1971), p. 73.
2 Solomon
O. Iyasere, 'Oral Tradition in the Criticism of African Literature', in The
Journal of ModernAfricanStudies(Cambridge), xiix, i March 1975, p. 107.

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AFRICANA

327
he be able to account for the optimum number of details at their maximum
level of significance, and so avoid the pitfall of misinterpreting the universal
by misunderstanding the particular. This is one of the greatest weaknesses
in much of the criticism of African literature at this time. In his discussion
of Amos Tutuola, for example, Gerald Moore simply dismisses the author's
use of traditional verbal art, perhaps because an essentially Eurocentric
approach cannot account for these uniquely African features.l
At times, what seems a flaw in the literature is more accurately a failure
in the approach. The BeautyfulOnesAre Not YetBorn appears 'plotless' until
we view it in structure and content as an elaborate parable, an artistic device
native to the African oral tradition. Furthermore, the maximum intensity
of Ayi Kwei Armah's satire is lost without recognition of his use of another
technique. Roscoe makes the point that 'Africans have a familiar way of
personifying anything, a device which can always be relied on to give flesh
and blood life to phenomena otherwise abstract and rather dull.'2 Armah
uses personification in precisely this way, to give flesh and blood life to
Koomsoon's corruption:
His mouth had the rich stench of rotten menstrual blood. The man held his breath until the
new smell had gone down in the mixture with the liquid atmosphere of the Party man's farts
filling the room. At the same time Koomsoon's insides gave a growl longer than usual, an
inner fart of personal, corrupt thunder which in its fullness sounded as if it had rolled down
all the way from the eating throat thundering through the belly and the guts, to end in
further silent pollution of the air already thick with flatulent fear.8

E. N. Obiechina provides the analysis: 'In this brief passage, Koomsoon's

corruption is no longer a simple, abstract moral issue. It is corruption
given a body, a physical phenomenon which is the more oppressive because
the more concrete and all-pervasive.'4 In similar fashion, other devices
borrowed from the oral tradition - such as repetition, proverbs, folk tales,
fables, and chants - also control and shape the artistry of Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe, The Voiceby Gabriel Okara, The Trial of Christopher
Okigboby Ali Mazrui, and This Earth, My Brotherby Kofi Awoonor.5
Plays, perhaps more than novels, owe heavily to the oral heritage of their
authors. The StrongBreedby Wole Soyinka, ThreePlays by J. P. Clark, Three
YorubaPlays by Duro Ladipo, and most recently The SuddenReturnand Other
Plays by Martin Owusu, articulate modern dilemmas through the voices of
tribal myths, dramatised story-telling, magical ceremonies, religious practices, and historical sagas. While these modem plays maintain a universality
of appeal, their particularities, which developed outside the western literary
milieu, are a testament to the richness of the dramatic tradition of the African
culture. Quite often, the standard western elements of unity of action,
balanced plot, or progressive development of characters may be absent. To
search for them - let alone to insist on their presence - in all African plays
is to miss the point.
1 Gerald Moore, The ChosenTongue:English writing in the
tropicalworld (London and New
2 Roscoe, op. cit. p. 97.
York, I969), pp. I63-6.
8 Ayi Kwei Armah, The BeautyfulOnesAre Not ret Born (London,
I969), pp. I91-2.
4 E. N. Obiechina, in Okike:a
Nigerianjournalof new writing (Nsukka), April 1971, p. 49.
6 Cf. Iyasere, loc. cit. pp. I I5-19.
22-2

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SOLOMON 0. IYASERE
328
For the most part, African drama was not 'staged' as in the West; rather,
it was a spontaneous activity in which 'the entire community is the cast and
the village square the stage', a traditional mode incorporated by J. P. Clark
for the opening of Ozidi. Clearly, what is true of plays from Europe may not
be true of those from Africa. Aristotle had neither TheImprisonment
of Obatala
nor The Murderof Adesuain mind when he conceived The Poetics;we cannot
presume that any African writer had Shakespeare in mind when he conceived his play. Contrary to established critical views, the general plot and
motivation of great tragedies are not the same everywhere, for human
nature is not identical the world over. Certainly the Tivs of northern
Nigeria are reported to have found Shakespeare's Hamletunintelligible and
the Prince of Denmark an object of ridicule.l
African literature today is then an amalgamation, a syncreticism, of past
and present. The criticism should be the same.2 The Eurocentric approach
did help to establish the importance of African writers by educating the
public to the general value of their literature and liberating this from the
strong grasp of the cultural anthropologists. For example, initial responses
viewed Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe as only the curious, ethnic
reportage of quaint, antique customs. Later, the literary critics called
attention to the artistic elements of the novel, and demonstrated that it was
a significant work of art. Similar points can be made about The Palm Wine
Drinkard by Amos Tutuola or The Interpreters
by Wole Soyinka. For this
reason, we ought not discard the benefits which this approach provides.
After all, 'one hand cannot wash itself clean; it needs the help of the other'.
What we need in our evaluation of African literature is an approach which
encourages what I call 'perceptivism'-a process of getting to know a
literary object from a diachronic as well as a synchronic point of view.
entails treating African literature as works of art, demanding
Culturalformalism
attention to the formal elements, the nsaasiaas the Turu would say, while
simultaneously forcing the critic, whatever his nationality, to account for
the cultural, referential properties embodied in the piece. To do both
involves an ongoing education and heightened sensitivity to traditional
African literary culture. Any other approach may well lead to the subversion
of the specificity of the literature and, consequently, to a bland, commonplace, if not erroneous, evaluation.
Let us consider, for example, the opening lines of Kwesi Brew's poem,
'The Vulture':
The broken bone cannot be made whole!
The strong had sheltered their strength
The swift had sought life in their speed
1 Laura Bohannan, 'Hamlet and the Tiv', in PsychologyToday (New York), July I975,
pp. 65-6.
2 Cf. Martin
Tucker, Africain ModernPerspective(New York, 1967), p. 262: 'for the purpose
of critical assessment of modern fiction about Africa, it is difficult to detect the presence of a
specifically neo-African development or trend. The opposite seems to be the case. African
writers have followed European models at the very moment they assail them.' Tucker here
seems unable to perceive the nuances of African literature, ironically those aspects that give
it life and vitality - a commentary on the limitations of the Eurocentric approach.

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AFRICANA

329

The crippled and the tired heaped out of the way.

Onto the ant hills...,

Lack of familiarity with the indigenous rhetorical devices of Ghana can lead
a critic to view this poem as a mere collection of pithy statements, loosely
strung together without coherence or form. Here, however, is a tight if
extended proverb, whose central idea is the despairing state of affairs in
Ghana. Rather than use straightforward description to convey his vision of
social reality, the poet uses situation - again a literary device characteristic
of African oral literature - to define and explore the contemporary context.
The first line tells of despair if not nihilism, as juxtaposed against the selfishness articulated in line two; the initial hopelessness is then further reinforced
by the loss of courage, the death of love and compassion, and the image of
the wasteland. The social landscape has both internal integrity of form and
effective dramatic development.
Brew's mode of rendition is quite similar to the traditional Yoruba oriki:
consider, for instance, this extract on the Ogogaor King of Ikerre:
However small the needle, the hen cannot swallow it.
The toad jumps about happily in the face of the cook.
Two hundred needles do not equal a hoe, two hundred
stars do not make a moon.
The white hair of an albino cannot be dyed,
A good rider will not be thrown off his horse.2

What is striking about this Yoruba poem is its diaphoric structure, what
would be to a westerner its unconventional mode of presentation. The central
idea, the invulnerability and almost supernatural power of the Ogoga of
Ikerre, is articulated progressively, but may seem to lack dramatic development and climax in the western sense of those terms. Each verse seems to
have no connection with the others, as if needle, hen, toad, cook, moon,
albino, rider, and horse were images carelessly thrown together.
On closer inspection, and with an awareness of the poem's traditional
function, it is seen to be both well structured and consistently meaningful.
All the thoughts are bound together, synthesised into a cohesive whole by
the implied referent, the Ogogahimself, whose enemies can no more overcome
him than the hen can overcome the needle or the cook the toad. Continuing
its metaphoric praise, the poem indicates that as 200 needles do not make a
hoe, nor 200 stars a moon, so 200 warriors are not match for the Ogoga.And
it is as impossible to depose him as it is to give colour to an albino's hair or
to throw a good rider from his horse.
The formal, traditional elements of these two works give them their aesthetic power and poetic dignity, in addition to their extra-aesthetic authority.
An awareness of the function of the rhetorical elements drawn from the oral
tradition reveals that these poems are not merely pithy utterances, but
deliberate artistic creations.
Cultural formalism, when judiciously and imaginatively employed, can
1 Edwin Thumboo, 'Kwesi Brew: the poetry of statement and situation', in African
LiteratureToday (London), 4, 1970, p. 35.
2
Janheinz Jahn, A HistoryofJAeo-AfricanLiterature(London, I966), pp. 63-4.

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SOLOMON 0. IYASERE
330
be a penetrating and discriminating tool, albeit with limitations, especially
in the hands of the neophyte or the over-zealous ancestralist. This approach
can degenerate into merely tracking down and cataloguing the vestiges of
the oral tradition, without demonstrating how these elements shape and
inform the imaginative life of the work itself. Such is the case with E. Ofori's
article on 'Traditionalism in African Literature' which focuses on Ozidi by
J. P. Clark.1
The point we need to bear in mind - seemingly missed by many critics - is
that a writer who draws upon the oral tradition does not necessarily make a
satisfying artistic creation. Like all formal elements in an original composition, the traditional features must declare their own artistic significance,
their own forms, and their own purpose in order to justify their inclusion.
Along with the generic and selective fallacies which any abuse of this approach
may engender, we must caution ourselves against eclecticism and its inadequate regard for the specificity and integrity of a work.
Nothing useful can be said about a literary piece until we have fastened
down the question of its making, its formal particularities, and it is in this
pursuit that cultural formalism is best applied. Here we have a valid and
responsive approach to the study of African literature. Its successful employment in bringing to readers that heightened sense of understanding - that
'Oh, I can see it now' experience-depends ultimately on the critic's
intelligence, his cerebral competence, learning, aesthetic sensibility, judgement, and, above all, his love of literature.
1
Haywood (ed.), op. cit. pp. 117-28. See also Solomon 0. Iyasere, 'African Critics on
African Literature: a study of misplaced hostility', in African LiteratureToday, 7, 1975, pp.
20-7.

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