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| Title: | Compound of spells: the predicament of D.O. Fagunwa (1903-63) |
| Author: | George, Olakunle |
| Year: | 1997 |
| Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
| Volume: | 28 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 78-97 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subject: | literature |
| About persons: | Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa Ngugi wa Thiong'o (1938-2025) |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819920 |
| Abstract: | Daniel Olorunfemi Fagunwa is a Yoruba writer, whose 'The forest of a thousand daemons: a hunter's saga' has been reprinted at least 24 times since it first appeared in 1938; it has also been translated into English by Wole Soyinka. Fagunwa's work illustrates a significant moment in the sociocultural adventure of Nigeria in particular and black Africa in general: the march into modernity. But insofar as a major concern behind Fagunwa's craft is that of Africa's modernity, his work cannot as yet be seen as a settled case. A central problem with which all African writers inevitably find themselves grappling is the debate surrounding the use of indigenous languages as against those of colonial imposition. In this respect, the question of language and the politics proper to it can serve as a convenient way of opening up Fagunwa's predicament. Ngugi wa Thiong'o' is currently the most influential critic of the centrality of the colonial languages in what he sees as the epistemological indentureship of postindependence African cultures. The present article first isolates the logic of voluntarism that underwrites Ngugi's conception of language and culture and, second, the schematism that accompanies his rejection of European languages and valorization of the higher potential of indigenous ones. Tested against the evidence of Fagunwa's novel, the voluntarism and the schematism stand to obscure much that is instructive in Fagunwa. Bibliogr., notes, ref. |
