The African Novel and the Integration of Oral Lores: An Evolution of African "Lit-Oral-Ture"

From a study of the African novel, one notices the possibility of establishing some intertextual connections among the extant African narratives. This is because the African novel is a hybrid genre that ineluctably presents contexts that are cut out of certain religio-political and social essences that are peculiarly African. Apart from this, African literature is further made distinctive by the indigenous oral-loric outlook of the African world-view which embellishes the thematic contents for the most African writers whose interest is the reflection of the pre-colonial contexts. It is thus possible to establish inevitable intertextual connectives spreading among some of the existing literary narratives that form the canon of the African novel. This essay thus sets out to evaluate such level of connectedness between the works of two Nigerian novelists Fagunwa and Tutuola - by externalizing their unmistakable reliance on the indigenous oral artefacts which are often found to festoon them. With this commitment, we hope to explicate Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard as an evident recapitulation of the oral artifacts that gave vent to Fagunwa's first two novels. This, we hope, will help us draw unparaphraseable intertextual relationship between the literary topographies of the two authors. By prosecuting what we set as goal in this essay, it is believed that we can successfully establish the skilful interplay of oral features in the African novel.