On Epic in Africa

In a brief note (spanning less than three pages) in the first publication of Oral Literature in Africa in 1970, Ruth Finnegan made the bold claim that ‘epic poetry does not seem to be a typical African form’. This triggered an almost homogeneous wave of vehement rebuttals from an array of scholars asserting the existence of the African epic. This mass refutation all but drowned out Finnegan’s case, and by the end of the decade, it was a foregone conclusion that there is, in fact, an epic in Africa. The focus, then, was ‘no longer to prove or assert the existence of the African epic, but rather to define the nature of that epic’. Mulokozi’s assessment here, however, betrays a fundamental flaw in the methodology of many proponents of the existence of the African epic. How can one argue, let alone conclude, that there is an epic in Africa before that epic is even defined? Closer inspection of these proponents’ work further reveals that this implied chronology, from assertion to definition, is either misconstrued or misrepresented. One did not come before the other. In fact, the characterisation and definition of the African epic constitutes a big part of the argument for its very existence. This is fallacious, circular reasoning: evidence for the existence of the African epic is predicated on criteria specifically constructed with said African epic in mind. This essay will revisit pivotal texts on either side of this debate, uncover biases and flawed arguments, and illustrate how a lack of stable definitions undermines this entire discourse.

Finnegan’s initial assertion ‘aroused universal indignation’ – including, from his tone, in Mulokozi himself. Indeed, his survey of the background of the debate, which one would expect to at least strive towards impartiality, frames Finnegan’s claim as a ‘negative statement’, immediately and directly contrasted with the ‘positive effect’ it incited, and finally, the latter side ‘won the day’. The highly emotive language of value-judgement, victory, and even justice, suggest a worrying abandonment of objectivity. While passion in itself should not be condemned, the academic sphere demands a level of openness to opposing views. A similarly emotive quality is evident in John William Johnson’s rather sassy title, ‘Yes, Virginia, There Is an Epic in Africa’. This ostensible ad hominem attack foreshadows further logical fallacies in Johnson’s argument. Both critics evidently feel very strongly about the existence of African epic, but this leads to their adoption of this fact as axiomatic in their work – problematic in a debate that seeks to question and destabilise this a posteriori premise.

Johnson rightly states that disagreeing with Finnegan ‘is not enough to support a thesis that epic can indeed be found on the continent of Africa’, and that a ‘positive statement must be made’. Furthermore, he identifies the root of disagreement on the subject as the ‘lack of a model for defining African epic’. Herein, however, lies the issue. The model Johnson seeks and proposes is expressly designed to describe African epic. Thus, the characteristics he identifies, while certainly fruitful in the study of what he calls Oral Epic Poetry, cannot logically support the claim that epic can be found in Africa. Johnson asserts and characterises Oral Epic Poetry as a genre without adequately addressing how it fits under the larger umbrella of ‘epic’, or justifying the use of the word ‘epic’ in ‘Oral Epic Poetry’. It is, therefore, an entirely arbitrary label – the genre he describes, by any other name, would be modelled the same, and frame discourse around that genre just as adequately. This holds true for other scholars on this side of the debate: Mulokozi seeks to refine these characterisations and definitions of the genre; and Isidore Okpewho, though he adopts a more comparative approach (consulting ‘most national traditions of that genre’, and reaching for ‘counterparts in the Greek and south Slavic traditions’), ultimately founds his arguments on a definition of ‘oral epic’ that is equally arbitrary, stretched and informed by African heroic tales to be included.

These arbitrary definitions of and labels for the genre demand a revisit of the criteria by which Finnegan made her original claim. Though uncited, Finnegan’s criteria are clearly derived from Aristotle’s Poetics. A comparative analysis, however, reveals that Finnegan does not simply adopt Aristotle’s criteria – there are subtle but salient differences between the two. First, Finnegan omits Aristotle’s criterion that ‘Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre’. This is curious given how it would be perhaps her strongest case against the existence of an epic in Africa. It is in direct opposition to the characteristic of ‘multigeneric qualities’ or ‘features’ identified and accepted by Johnson and Mulokozi respectively. 

Second, there seems to be confusion over narrative levels. Genette’s three aspects of narrative help elucidate this matter. Regarding the length of the epic poem, it is clear that Aristotle refers to histoire, the narrative content, when he says that ‘the Epic action has no limits of time’. Yet, Finnegan’s ‘sort of scale which might qualify’ as an epic is measured in pages. She is clearly concerned with récit, the signifier, in this instance the transcribed narrative text. This raises two issues. First, Finnegan seems to have misunderstood Aristotle’s idea of length. Second, and perhaps more worryingly given the subject matter of her seminal work, she measures récit not in length of narration (as oral literature), but in pages. The ramifications of what appear to be misconstrued criteria are long-lasting and far-reaching. Length, in her sense, is a common criterion, adopted by even Finnegan’s harshest detractors – Johnson measures his secondary ‘Characteristic of Length’ both in length of narration, and number of lines in transcription; and Mulokozi considers it a ‘variable category’, measuring the length not of the story, but of the performance (not récit, but narration, yet still not histoire as Aristotle meant).

Despite her revisions and possible misinterpretations, Finegan’s principal argument stands: in the strictest, most classical sense (Aristotle, undoubtedly, chief authority here), there is no epic in Africa. The biggest issue with her argument is not the misapplication of criteria, but the selection of an obsolete framework. Genre, after all, is ‘not a concept that can be operated wholly externally, by an objective observer alone: for an idea of genre is constitutive of the texts themselves’. Aristotle’s criteria can only apply to those epics he describes, for genre identification is a descriptive endeavour, and genre a descriptive category. This is the missing premise in the characterisation of African epic. Genres are unstable and constantly evolving. ‘Genre conventions undergo constant…mutations’, over time and across cultures. Naturally, then, the introduction of African epic into previously eurocentric discourse disrupts existing frameworks and definitions. For instance, Okpewho makes the important observation that the prose-verse (or prosaic-poetic) binary is ruptured, or at least problematised, in the African context. Verse and poetics in African languages and societies cannot be reduced to prosodic measurements and other existing structural frameworks. Instead, ‘we must abandon those formal distinctions between prose and verse which literate judgement has taught us’. African epic, much more than fitting into the genre, should be asserted as advancing the wider field of epic studies. Points of departure from existing epic scholarship should call into question not the categorisation of African epic, but the frameworks that fall apart when confronted with it.

There is a need, as this essay has striven to do, to strike a balance between building on the foundations of precursors, and recognising where their framework falls short. Aristotelian foundations should neither be disposed of entirely, nor blindly adopted. Similarly, Finnegan’s note should neither be discredited, nor necessarily accepted. Rather, both are a starting point, and a call to action – quite explicitly in Finnegan’s case. They must be engaged with critically, addressed fairly, and deconstructed meticulously, rather than simply rejected, so as to further discourse in the field.

Bibliography

Aristotle, Poetics, trans. by S. H. Butcher, 4th edn (New York: Dover Publications, 1951)

Barber, Karin, The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics: Oral and Written Culture in Africa and Beyond (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Finnegan, Ruth, Oral Literature in Africa (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2012)

Genette, Gérard, ‘Discours du récit: essai de méthode’, in Figures III (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1972), pp. 65-273

Johnson, John William, ‘Yes, Virginia, There Is an Epic in Africa’, Research in African Literatures, 11, no. 3 (1980), 308-26

Mulokozi, M. M., ‘The African Epic Controversy’, Fabula, 43, no. 1-2 (2002), 4-17

Okpewho, Isidore, ‘Does the Epic Exist in Africa? Some Formal Considerations’, Research in African Literatures, 8, no. 2 (1977), 171-200