Deapartment of English Language

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Creating New Bounds: Identity and Form of African Literature
(Journal of the Literary Scholars Association, 2025-06) Aliyu Saeedat Bolajoko
Imagining the future of African literature, popular culture, and the digital humanities provides a rich pool for literary scholars to push the frontiers of the literary enterprise of Africa. Literature of the African continent has grown and is still growing, metamorphosing in diverse forms, and inviting scrutiny that will help upcoming scholars and literature enthusiasts appreciate the growth and extent of this vibrant body of literary art. There is no gainsaying in the fact that African literature is no longer that body that is strictly tailored after, or conditioned by, the literary traditions of other climes. It has come a long way from what Ernest Emenyonu describes as the pre-colonial and colonial European intellectual theory of “If it is not written, it is not Literature!” (3), and which Obiajunwa Wali calls “a minor appendage in the main stream of European literature” (13). The focus of this paper is to examine the African literary enterprise which, I dare to say, is defying old labels, shaking off old restrictions, and carving out new identities. This ambitious exploration I hope to explain to you using the changing dynamics playing out in the different modes through which African literature is taking.