Skip to content

Abiola Irele Quotes

1936–2017

Francis Abiola Irele (22 May 1936 – 2 July 2017) was a Nigerian literary scholar, critic, professor and one of the leading figures in African literary criticism. He was known for his studies on African literature, oral tradition, Negritude, and the relationship between African cultural expression and modern literary forms.

Random Abiola Irele quote

4 quotes

The problem of studying African literature is to see whether the traditional methods of literary analysis developed within Western culture are appropriate to African literature.

The African writer has had to confront the problem of expressing a modern African reality through languages inherited from colonial history.

African literature has served both as a direct and objective representation of our modern experience as well as a symbolization of the states of mind induced by that experience.

An important component of this relationship is the question of language, that is, of the modes of perception and of representation that govern the master/slave dialectic.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Abiola Irele (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.