SOURCE: Wise, Christopher. “Resurrecting the Devil: Notes on Ngugi's Theory of the Oral-Aural African Novel.” Research in African Literatures 28, no. 1 (spring 1997): 134-40.

In the following essay, Wise discusses contradictions in Ngugi's theories on oral and written literature, comparing Ngugi's fictional works with such critical works as Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature.

The loss of the oral-aural lifeworld and community values of precolonial African culture forms a great theme of contemporary African literature, though perhaps nowhere more so than in the theoretical writings of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o.¹ In fact, Ngũgĩ has described himself as one of the “Okonkwos of [African] literature” (Moving the Centre 3), a statement that may reveal more about his private literary obsessions than he himself is aware. Indeed, Ngũgĩ's writings are deeply marked by his longing for the lost community setting of his childhood in a Gikuyu...