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.