Amos Tutuola and African Literary Tradition

Abstract

Perhaps Amos Tutuola's most significant and valuable contribution to modern African literature is that he is responsible for focusing the eyes of the English-speaking world on the new body of literature emerging from Africa. Tutuola's first book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard (Faber and Faber, 1952) marks the beginning of a literature that is both uniquely African and that has literary merit. The Palm-Wine Drinkard,was the first African work to receive great critical attention, especially in England, and was such a unique work of art that Western critics began to look for further efforts from Tutuola and at her modern African writers. Unfortunately, there was also a great deal of confusion and misinterpretation that went along with Tutuola's introduction into the non-African world, for some early critics saw his language as the beginning of a neo-African English, which it clearly is not.

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