Gikandi Simon, Reading the African Novel, Kenya, Heinemann, 1987.

Simon Gikandi provides critical analysis on the African novel.

[WorldCat.org].

‍

Finnegan, Ruth. Oral Literature in Africa. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Open Book Publishers, 2012.

Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa.

Source: culled from https://books.openedition.org

Fraser, Robert. West African poetry: a critical history. Cambridge University Press, 1986

This book examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Do the roots of such poetry lie in Africa or in Europe? In committing their work to writing, do poets lose more than they gain? Can the immediacy of oral performance ever be recovered? Robert Fraser's account of two centuries of West African verse examines its subjugation to a succession of international styles: from the heroic couplet to the austerity of experimental Modernism. Successive chapters take us through the Négritude movement and the emergence of anglophone free verse in the 1950s to the rediscovery in recent years of the neglected springs of orality, which is the subject of the concluding chapter.

[Cambridge University Press/Cambridge.org].

Cazenave, Odile, and PatriciaCélérier. Contemporary Francophone African Writers and the Burden of Commitment. University of Virginia Press, 2011.

By looking at engagée literature from the recent past, when the francophone African writer was implicitly seen as imparted with a mission, to the present, when such authors usually aspire to be acknowledged primarily for their work as writers, Contemporary Francophone African Writers and the Burden of Commitment addresses the current processes of canonization in contemporary francophone African literature. Odile Cazenave and Patricia Célérier argue that aesthetic as well as political issues are now at the forefront of debates about the African literary canon, as writers and critics increasingly acknowledge the ideology of form. Working across genres but focusing on the novel, the authors take up the question of renewed forms of commitment in this literature. Their selected writers range from Mongo Beti, Ousmane Sembène, and Aminata Sow Fall to Boubacar Boris Diop, Véronique Tadjo, Alain Mabanckou, and Léonora Miano, among others.

[Source: University of Virginia Press]

Blair, Dorothy S. African Literature in French: A History of Creative Writing in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Cambridge University Press, 1976.

This 1976 book provides both a historical survey and acritical analysis of the literature in French from West and Equatorial Africa. Professor Blair begins by discussing the social, educational and political influences which led to the formation of the Negritude movement and to a flowering of French-African creative writing. This historical approach is then complemented by a study of the different literary genres. She traces the evolution of the first manifestations of literary activity in French by African writers, the written folktale, fable and short story, from the oral tradition of the indigenous culture, and the eventual appearance of the novel with a legendary or historical theme. The origins of French-African drama are considered for the first time, and the work of the minor poets analyzed. Finally, Professor Blair attempts a definition of the French-African novel, and studies examples from three major periods from the 1930s onwards.

[Source: Cambridge University Press].

Osisanwo, Ayo. “Discursive Strategies in Selected Political Campaign Songs in South western Nigeria”. Communication and Linguistics Studies. Volume 6, Issue 4, (December 2020) pp. 73-81. doi:10.11648/j.cls.20200604.12

Discursive strategies are often deployed to create awareness, capture and persuade the electorate in political campaign songs. Existing scholarly works on political and electoral issues have examined different aspects of political discourses but have not sufficiently examined the import of political campaign songs in electoral and political discourses. Therefore, this paper examines the use of political campaign songs in southwestern Nigeria with a view to identifying the discursive strategies deployed to persuade the electorate. The YouTube Channel was visited in order to retrieve the transcript of political campaign jingles used during the 2011,2015 and 2019 general elections in southwestern Nigeria. The selected period comprised the most recent general elections in the region. Guided by relevant aspects of the socio-cognitive model of critical discourse analysis, data were subjected to discourse analysis. The analysis uncovers the vital relationship existing between the political campaign songs and the Nigerian socio-cultural spatial setting that produced them. Eight discursive strategies: allusion(historical, religious/biblical, socio-cultural), propaganda, indigenous/native language usage and code alternation, reference to collective ownership, figurative/proverbial expressions, adaptation of common musical tune, and rhythmicity were identified. Politicians use different discursive and rhetorical strategies in their political campaign songs to open the door to the heart of the electorate.

[Source: Article abstract].