ORALITY AND LITERATURE: RETHINKING BALANCE IN THE QUESTION OF DEFINITION

Abstract

This inquiry, anchored on the resistive postulations of postcolonial
literary theory, contends that colonialism has continued through new
relationships concerning the production and control of knowledge.
Scholarship, particularly in literary Africa, has been hemmed in to
view several concepts which lack universality from the eyes of the
West. Literature as well as its very definition are, unfortunately, some
of the controversial areas. Thus, if literary scholarship in Africa is
inclined to associate literature inextricably with writing, is such an
association logical or is it merely a consequence of the influence of
the West? How does one account for the millions of people in precolonial Africa, Asia, Polynesia and even Europe who expertly
‘practised’ the art of literature with little or no knowledge of letters?
In any case, does literature exist in the lines in black ink or is writing
merely a method of documenting that which has been conceived from
imagination? Does objective and logical thinking permit one to lay
greater emphasis on the ‘means’ or on the ‘substance’ of literature? Is
writing essential to the ‘composition’ or to the ‘preservation’ of
literature? If literature - as the pioneer literary critic, Aristotle, has
submitted in his Poetics - is produced primarily by means of language,
then the question becomes: Is language reducible to words on paper
or can it also be spoken? This investigation interrogates these
questions with a view to furthering conversations and arguments
surrounding the rigid definition of literature which limits the concept
only to print; it also tries to clear the mist of understanding and
prejudice surrounding oral narratives, even as it calls for balance in
the question of definition of literature.