Developing an Original Methodology for Studying Intertextual Relationships Between African Oral and Written Literary Traditions

The study of intertextual relationships between African oral and written literary traditions requires a methodology specifically designed for the distinctive challenges of oral literary evidence: its performative variability, its communal ownership, its resistance to fixed-text intertextuality analysis, and its embedding within cultural practices that resist extraction for textual analysis. This study developed an original methodology for studying oral-written intertextuality in African comparative literary contexts, focusing on Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa literary traditions. A methodological development approach was employed across four phases. Phase one conducted a systematic critical review of existing methodologies applied to oral-written intertextuality in seventeen published studies. Phase two conducted empirical testing of three alternative methodological approaches in a pilot study of the relationship between Yoruba ijala oral poetry and its residues in the work of five South West Nigerian poets. Phase three developed the original methodology through iterative refinement based on pilot study results and consultation with twelve oral literature and comparative literature specialists. Phase four validated the methodology through application to a set of previously unpublished Igbo oral narrative materials. The resulting methodology, the Comparative Oral-Written Trace Analysis (COWTA), provides a seven-stage procedure for identifying and analysing oral literary traces in written texts, including protocols for establishing oral source identity, tracing formal transformation across the oral-written interface, assessing the literary function of oral residues in their new written contexts, and constructing culturally sensitive intertextual arguments. Expert validation confirmed COWTA's methodological rigour and originality.

Keywords: oral-written intertextuality, original methodology, African literary research, COWTA, Comparative Literature