How Worlds are Made: Literatures, Translation, and the Question of the Universal

Weaving the work of Eileen Julien on the “extroverted” African novel throughout, this article considers arguments around the relationship of African literature to the notion of literary universality, with special attention to the position of African languages within these arguments. Novels by Kenyan...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Research in African literatures Vol. 55; no. 3; pp. 78 - 92
Main Author: Arenberg, Meg
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Bloomington Indiana University Press 22.09.2025
Subjects:
Achebe, Chinua
African languages
African literature
Anglophones
Debates
French literature
Kenyan literature
Languages
Novels
Reading
Social aspects
Translations
Translations and translating
Writers
Africa
ISSN:0034-5210, 1527-2044, 1527-2044
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Weaving the work of Eileen Julien on the “extroverted” African novel throughout, this article considers arguments around the relationship of African literature to the notion of literary universality, with special attention to the position of African languages within these arguments. Novels by Kenyan writers Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and theoretical interventions by Walter Benjamin, Edouard Glissant, and Souleymane Bachir Diagne in particular are used to develop strategies for reading moments of contact between English and African languages in Anglophone African novels as central to the pursuit of a universality that is neither totalizing nor Eurocentric.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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ISSN:0034-5210
1527-2044
1527-2044
DOI:10.2979/ral.00073