By the early 1950s a diverse group of African authors pushed the limits of conventional representations of African sexuality by creating fictional African characters who engaged in same-sex practices or expressed same-sex desire. The first critical discussions of this literature by Daniel Vignal (1983) and Chris Dunton (1989) found that African novelists often treated same-sex sexuality in didactic or schematic ways. In this they largely conformed to the prevailing consensus among ethnographers and other experts developed over many decades, viz., homosexuality was a) non-existent or insignificant in African traditional cultures until b) introduced by Europeans or Arabs, and c) was a social pathology that Africans could and should resist as with other forms of imperialism or moral corruption. In Dunton's terms, ‘homosexual practice is almost invariably attributed to the detrimental impact made on Africa by the West’ (Dunton 1989, 421). Both Dunton and Vignal, however, also noted exceptions and ambiguities in the texts that they analysed, and concluded that Africans artists were not consistently and dogmatically homophobic or heterosexist in their work. Indeed, Vignal went so far as to suggest an element of ‘homophilia,’ meaning that he discerned sympathy or respect in some authors' treatment of the issue. Despite sometimes hamhanded ‘explanations’ of non-normative sexualities, authors such as Lanham and Mopeli-Paulus (1953), Ouologuem (1971), and Njau (1975) recognized the possibility of love, dignity and ‘moral honesty’ (Maddy 1973, 90) in samesex relationships.