THE PRECOLONIAL AFRICAN NOVEL AS A PALIMPSEST IN POSTCOLONIAL NARRATIVES

Abstract

This paper grapples with the technical denitions of the precolonial African novel which is viewed as constituting a palimpsest in postcolonial narratives. The study aims to clarify the denitional problems that plague the existence of the precolonial novel. The analysis of the study is based on Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Etim Akaduh's The Ancestor and Ayi Kwei Armah's Two Thousand Seasons, three postcolonial novels that have precolonial inscriptions in their subtexts. The research draws its analytical tools from intertextuality and postcolonialism to account for the textual formations as well as the issues that undergird these formations in postcolonial novels. The analysis of the primary texts reveals that the precolonial novel is marked by impurity and hybridity; a dependent clause in the postcolonial novel's sentences since its writing postdates the era it claims to represent, among other cogent excuses.