Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing: Orality and History in the Work of Rev. Samuel Johnson, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka and Ben Okri

by Ato Quayson

'This is an innovative and original study which offers a new perspective on a Nigerian literary tradition. Quayson takes issue with the prevalent use of oral tradition in the criticism of Europhone written literature as a kind ofcultural matrix out of which the written text emerged, and the essence of which it embodies. He proposes instead a view of literary tradition as the outcome of numerous, and varied, strategic acts of positioning in relation to indigenous resources - which vary according to the individual writer's project but also according to the larger social and political context. He constructs a historical framework in which to view these strategies as performed by Samuel Johnson in The History of the Yorubas (1921 [1897]), Amos Tutuola (1950s), Soyinka (1960s and 70s) and Ben Okri (1980s and 90s).' - Karin Barber, Senior Lecturer at the Centre of African Studies, University of Birmingham North America: Indiana U Press

Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Ato Quayson is Professor of English and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism, Strategic Transformations in Nigerian Writing, Calibrations: Reading for the Social, and Aesthetic Nervousness: Disability and the Crisis of Representation, as well as editor of the two-volume Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature, coeditor of A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism Studies and general editor of the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry.

Reviews

[Leif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would that we could all write such eloquent, capable dissertations!