Anthroliterary Discovery of a Novel Form in Nigeria: Itan Igbesi-Aiye Emi ‘Segilola, Eleyin’ju Ege’ & the Re-Reading of Print Culture, Events & Images in the First Nigerian Novel

Summary

BACKGROUND INTRODUCTION

Empirical inquiries into situated texts and readerships can help scholars to comprehend the variety of relationships between readers and printed texts in different global locations. Through such situated histories of reading and literary production, we can start to build comparisons between print cultures in different regions of the world and to understand the historical contexts that inform contemporary understandings of literacy. (Stephanie Newell The Power to Name: A History of Anonymity in Colonial West Africa: 6)

With contemporary scholarship providing platforms for interdisciplinary exchange of empirical knowledge; and newer investigation of (pre)colonial histories prying into popular experiences situated within colonial newspapers, it is now possible to learn how the historical context of colonial literary activities can help to (re)shape ‘contemporary understandings’ of the novel in Nigeria. It is also now possible to use the initial responses of Nigerian creative writers and readers to print culture to establish newer truth about the emergence of the novel form in Nigeria. While the situated understanding and histories of print culture varies from one geographical location and literary culture to another, the credit for the origin of Nigerian novel in print, goes to I.B. Thomas's The Life Story of Me, Segilola – a collection of fictional epistles of the life and times of a mystery character called Segilola, serialized and situated within the newspaper print culture of the 1929 to 1930 colonial Nigeria. This is contrary to popular assumptions attributing the emergence of print culture and the novel in Nigeria to D.O. Fagunwa's Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale. Therefore, re-imagining the emergence of the novel form in Nigeria is most likely if we take Newell's conception of ‘situated text’, to mean that the printed texts (novel genre) are not only situated in books that have come to be canonized, but also in the newspaper medium. In Newell's opinion, to understand the origin of Nigerian literary print culture, we must return to the situated ‘history of reading and literary production in Nigeria’ (5) – which precedes English-language literature in Nigeria by fifteen to twenty years (Barber Print Culture and the First Yoruba Novel: 7).

Most histories and studies on colonial Lagos are based on the colonial activities of Lagos; ranging from the intense political atmosphere, active economic environment, rural-urban migration, crossborder exchange, transport, housing, kinship, etc.