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I Ño. 251 the CONTRIBUTION of ENGLISH LANGUAGE and WEST

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I Ño. 251 the CONTRIBUTION of ENGLISH LANGUAGE and WEST Ño. 251 I THE CONTRIBUTION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND WEST AFRICAN LITERATURE TO THE RISE OF NATIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS IN WEST AFRICA Ernest A. Champion A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 1974 ABSTRACT This study followed the literary trail of pre-colonial and post­ colonial English speaking West Africa. The purpose was to determine the contribution made by the English language to the rise of a national consciousness in West Africa. During the years following the colonization of West Africa, the native peoples adopted the-mores and traditions of cultured western society. They made the English language their own, and adopted the legal and educational systems of England. West African scholars such as Blyden and Africanus Horton were very pragmatic in their observation that Africans must learn to live with the best of. two worlds, the in­ herited and the acquired. The absence of a written alphabet resulted in Africans being rele­ gated to the bottom rung in the cultural ladder. Their language, customs i ■ ' ' and religion were considered primitive. The efforts of western Christian missions to bring religion, culture and education, to Africa thus had a genuine humanitarian base. The analysis of novels written during the colonial period revealed the culture of West Africa before the advent of Europeans. Novels such as Tutuola's The Pa Im Wi ne Dri nkard and Achebe1s Th i ngs Fa I I Apart recreated in artistic terms the historic past. No Longer At Ease by Achebe and One Man, One Matchet by T. M. Aluko brought the reader closer to the period ending with World War II. This period was marked by the paradoxical alienation of westernized Africans from tradition concurrently with a rise in national consciousness and identity. This study also concluded that while the English language contributed Ill greatly to a rise of national consciousness it has also been realistic in its revelations. Writers such as Soyinka, Achebe and Armah, using the same international language, portrayed the disillusionment and frustration of intellectuals disappointed with the first fruits of free­ dom. However, the very expression of this bitterness freely and without restriction is in itself an act of national awareness. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION 1-11 CHAPTER 1 12-37 CHAPTER II 38-70 CHAPTER III 71-95 CONCLUSION 96-100 FOOTNOTES 101-112 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 113-11 S' INTRODUCTION The white man has detribalized me. He had better go the whole hog. He must know that I'm the personi­ fication of the African paradox, detribalized, west­ ernized, but still African - minus the conflicts.! The African paradox that Ezekiel Mphahlele refers to in his book The African Image is also basically the implied paradox of colonialism, made manifest by the English language and its literature in giving an impetus and a momentum to African nationalist movements in the early.and mid twentieth century. In the very act of colonizing a whole continent and imposing an alien tongue upon diverse clans and tribes, the Eng­ lishman gave to the African a lingua franca which fused a people to­ gether and gave them a new identity. Ndabning Sithole, in his book African Nationalism, observes that . .eventually a common language, a kind of 'lingua franca' soon developed, and thus communication was facilitated among members of different tribes. It must be remembered that fundamentally the tribal concept arose out of a common need of a group of people who had a common, goaI. The government of the Republic of South Africa is now trying to push back the African tribes into their former tribal patterns to avert this so-called danger of African Nationalism which is an amalgamation of different tribes with a common objective.2 It was thus by means of a common language imposed by the colonizer for reasons of commerce, trade and bureaucratic efficiency that Africa became detribalized. Moreover, England which had the biggest single share of the conti- nent, by spreading its language and literature across territorial boun- daries gave to African nationalism a continental dimension, which has made possible.the Pan African movements of the fifties and sixties. English also served as a link between Africa and the New World. The 2 New World with its own history of slavery, was in turn a symbol of emancipation and freedom. Kwame Nkrumah in his autobiography wrote, I was too stunned for emotions to play much part in the leave taking and it was not until the boat sailed out from the harbour and I saw the Statue of Liberty with her arms raised as if in a personal farewell to me that a mist covered my eyes. 'You have opened my eyes to the true meaning of liberty,' I thought. 'I shall never rest until I have carried your message to Africa.'3 However long before Nkrumah's arrival back home, the New World had played a very significant role in forging West African nationalism. Further development of this contribution will be examined in greater detai I. While colonialism was detribalizing Africa and giving its people a new identity it was also giving them a new sense of national pride. The African was being given the opportunity to master a modern written language which was not only going to open the Dark Continent to the world but also bring the world to Africa. Through the language of the Master, the African was to become master of his own world, and even­ tually take his place as an equal in the community of nations. Rabemananjara the Malagasy poet voiced the aggressive nationalism of Africans when he said at the second conference of Negro writers and artists, Truly our conference is one of language thieves. This crime at least we have committed ourselves. We have stolen from our masters this treasure of identity, the vehicle of their thought, the golden key to their soul, the magic sesame which opens wide the door of their se­ crets, the forbidden cave where they have hidden the loot taken from our fathers and for which we must demand reckon¡ng.4 3 At the first congress one of the participants had vigorously asserted, "We could not tolerate the solution of an Africa shut in on itself through teaching in the native languages. We have every faith in the virtue of hybrid clviI¡sations."^ A far cry indeed from the views of Mahatma Ghandi who said in reply to Mcaulay's recommendations of educa­ tion in English for all Indians, "It is we the English knowing Indians that have enslaved India. The curse of the nation will rest not upon the English but upon us."^ The imposition of English on West Africa and the system of educa­ tion based on the British pattern was paradoxically enough destined to provide the African with resources far greater and far beyond what was envisaged by the colonial masters. If the school and its medium of instruction imposed certain hardships on the African child educated in English, it nevertheless prepared him to meet the world that was fast advancing upon him. The mastery of this new language gave him a dis­ cipline and a sense of his own ability to move into academic and intel­ lectual circles at the highest possible levels. It ultimately produced the Chinua Achebes, the Wole Soyinkas, the Cyprian Ekwensis and the Kwame Nkrumahs who would, as inheritors of two worlds, meet the chal­ lenges of a changing West Africa. The Achebes, the Soyinkas and Nkrumahs are in a certain sense inhe­ ritors of a nationalism of continental dimensions. In 1880 Edward Blyden the West Indian scholar writing from Liberia in the English language said, But the world has yet to witness the forging of the great chain which is to bind the nations together in equal fel­ lowship and friendly union. I mean the mighty principle of Love, as It is taught in the New Testament. Many are of 4 opinion that this crowning work is left for the African. It may yet come to pass that when in Europe, 'God has gone out of date' or when the belief in. God will be as the tales with which old women frighten children, when the world will be a machine, the ether, a gas, and God will be a force, then earnest inquirers after truth, leaving the seats of science, and the highest civilisation, will betake them­ selves to Africa to learn lessons of faith and piety; for Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God.7 Blyden with dignity and pride asserted, "I would rather be a member of this race than a Greek in the time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augus­ tan period or an Anglo Saxon in the Nineteenth Century."® This conti­ nental dimension has been an ever present factor in African nationalism, a nationalism imbued with a prophetic vision of people destined for great things in the cultural history of the world. Thus English educa­ ted Africans were deeply moved when Bernard Shaw the Irish Socialist, thinker and dramatist in a letter to the New York Times on the 13th of April, 1933 said, "CiviIisations grow up and disappear, to be replaced by other and stronger civilisations. For all I know the next great civilisation may come from the negro race."9 Blyden and Shaw gave ex­ pression to the deepest national aspiration of Africans, not merely to claim for themselves a piece of God's little acre, but to demonstrate to the world at large that the Black Continent has been and could still be the cradle of a great civilization.
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