INTRODUCTION

The work of critics is to analyse, comment on and judge works of art in relation to their contents, qualities and styles or techniques. There had always been critics to interpret and explain works of literature and there will always be critics making statements about literature – both canonical and minority cultural productions. The criticism of African literature emerged when writers such as Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, Cyprian Ekwensi, Camara Laye, Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ayi Kwei Armah and other renowned writers emerged, especially with the establishment of the African Writers Series (AWS) which published some of their work.

When journals like African Literature Today (ALT), Research in African Literatures (RAL), Présence Africaine, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Literary Half-Yearly and World Literature Written in English (WLWE) emerged, critics began to give serious critical attention to the literature being produced by African writers. Quite a number of the critics were foreigners or Africanists, as they were called, and they include Bernth Lindfors, Charles Larson and John Povey, but there were also those who were indigenous and came from different parts of Africa, especially Nigeria, including Donatus Nwoga, Emmanuel Obiechina, Eldred Durosimi Jones, Eustace Palmer, Abiola Irele, Charles Nnolim, Dan Izevbaye, Ernest Emenyonu, Oyin Ogunba, Ime Ikiddeh and Romanus Egudu. The outlets for their critical essays were these new and strategic journals even though some of the critics wrote full length books on specific authors or subjects.

THE CRITICISM OF AFRICAN LITERATURE: FIRST STEPS

It is important to state categorically that literary criticism as practised in Europe and America has had an enduring influence on literary criticism in Africa. This is hardly surprising considering that the earliest African critics of the 1960s, especially, were educated by Europeans mostly in the language/literature departments of universities in Europe or Africa. Therefore, it was natural that the critics who began to explain, comment on or interpret African literature in the 1960s used European critical standards and tools to do their work in spite of the fact that some of them had disagreed with European critics who tried to interpret African literature at the time. Among the reactions to the ‘misinterpretations’ of African literary texts by foreign (expatriate) and even indigenous critics was Ernest Emenyonu's article entitled ‘African Literature: What does it take to be its Critic?’