In Search of African literary Aesthetics

English language texts of Africa and its Diaspora that are 'transgressive' in the sense that they deviate from realist, linear narratives, may be linked under the categories of modern, post-modern, or post-colonial literatures. Post-colonial critics generally consider such writing to respond to colonization and Western literatures, which the texts subvert by 'writing back'. This article suggests that artistic principles present in indigenous African oral arts including music and in particular drumming, as well as oral storytelling, provided a resource-base for the aesthetics of Nigerian Amos Tutuola's and Zimbabwean Yvonne Vera's texts, the first of which were published in 1952 and 1992, respectively. These aesthetics include fusion between the physical and metaphysical worlds, a preponderance of images, use of repetition and sound and rhythm of words, non-linear narrative, and non-closure. The article examines the conditions that gave rise to the production of Tutuola's texts and their reception particularly among European publishers and critics. It explores the resource-base for the aesthetics of Tutuola's The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952) and argues for the presence of aesthetics based in oral arts and cross-cultural exchange within the Yoruba culture. As the article demonstrates through discussion of the production and critical reception of his texts, Tutuola wrote texts that were considered innovative within the European and American contexts, without appropriating modern and postmodern techniques. The article similarly explores the production and critical reception of Vera's texts. Through examining the resource-base for Vera's texts and discussing their critical reception, it suggests that Vera and therefore other writers of texts that lie outside of realist, linear narratives - even if educated in European, American, and other world literatures - may draw on aesthetic resources based in oral arts indigenous to Africa.