imagination with the morally guided is a constant process in much of his work’
(Fagunwa 1982:2).
Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan was translated into many African and Asian
languages in the late nineteenth century or the early twentieth. Some critics feel that it
was the ready availability of such works that influenced the first writers in many of
those languages, including Fagunwa. They see in the pious moralising a direct attempt
on the part of those early writers to combine what they knew of printed literature with
what they knew and felt of their orature. Other critics believe that this same seriousness
of purpose can be found in the proverbs and aphorisms of orature and that it was quite
natural to weave this into written genres. However, most studies of the novels of
Fagunwa (and those of his contemporaries and followers) do find in that writing a
unique combination of orature and literature.
Another Nigerian writer, Chinua Achebe, has written some books specifically for
children as well as a number of novels for adults. Achebe, too, takes very seriously this
commonly accepted requisite for stories aimed at children in his culture: they must pass
on wisdom, be educative, in some way. He has specifically stated that he does not wish
to be excused from this task: ‘Perhaps what I write is applied art as distinct from pure.
But who cares? Art is important, but so is education of the kind I have in mind’ (Achebe
1975:72).
Apart from a few skilled writers (of the Fagunwa and Achebe calibre), this
preoccupation with message overwhelms much of the writing for children in developing
countries. It is parallel to the didacticism in European children’s literature of the
nineteenth century. It often prevents writers from allowing the exuberance and
spontaneity of orature to be carried over into the texts they create for children. And
those who publish and promote reading for children in developing countries often show
a subtle bias against oral cultures, even while professing to be interested in creating
literature for them. A recent manual from Bolivia states: ‘We use the term “bridge-book”
to define a new type of reading material, destined for newly literate populations, whose
cultural roots reveal themselves to be very different from those of more advanced
populations’ (Promocion de la Lectura 1985:95).
An illustrated children’s book represents quite well the linear, ‘rational’ aspects of
many Western cultures, and even some of the Asian ones with fairly long traditions of
writing. Whether the lines move from left to right, right to left, or up and down, they are
essentially all paced in the same way, with words or characters separated from each
other in easily recognised repeating patterns. The story contained within the book
generally also is very linear, moving from one action or event to the next, most often with
cause expressed or implied before effect.
But many cultures have stories (and other cultural artefacts) that are expressed
chiefly in circular or spiral terms. There might be a ‘beginning’ but there is no real ‘middle’
or ‘end’. Cumulative stories in some cultures do not have a climactic event that then
triggers actions moving the story to a final conclusion, as in the English ‘The old woman
and her pig’. Instead there is a continuing series of events that can go on ad infinitum;
they can begin or end at almost any point.
Or there is far more ambiguity in the ending, as in the dilemma stories common
among the Nkundo and other African cultures. Such stories are not really comparable to
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