The Development of a Critical Approach to theModern West African Novel and its Applicaiton to the Works of Chinua Achebe
Abstract
As the reader will soon find, the subject dealt with in
this paper has no clear beginning or end. The biggest problem
for me was to find a point where I could get into the subject
and proceed toward a conclusion. Unfortunately, the subject
doesn't lend itself easily to such an approach. All facets of
the critical approach to the modern West African novel are inextricably
bound up with one another, and a competent discussion
of any one must assume a knowledge of all the others.
The reader who comes to this paper totally unprepared will not
feel the problems as much as the reader with a background. Fortunately for me (but as I endeavor to show in the paper, unfortunately
for the modern novel), most of my readers will fall
into the first category. My lack of success at making a straight
line out of a circle will be less apparent to them than to myself.