A Theoretical Investigation of the Relationship Between Nigerian Literature and European Postmodernism

The relationship between postmodernism as a European and North American literary-philosophical movement and contemporary Nigerian fiction, which shares some formal features with postmodernism while being deeply embedded in African oral and cosmological traditions, represents a theoretical problem that has not been adequately resolved in existing scholarship. This study conducted an original theoretical investigation of the relationship between Nigerian literature and European postmodernism, examining both the points of formal convergence and the fundamental ontological divergences between the two literary modes. A critical theory and close reading methodology drawing on postmodern theory (Lyotard, Jameson, Hutcheon, McHale), African literary criticism (Biodun Jeyifo, Simon Gikandi, Stephanie Newell), and philosophy of African ontology was employed. Primary textual analysis covered 25 Nigerian literary works from authors in all six geopolitical zones that have been characterised as postmodern in existing scholarship. The theoretical investigation demonstrated that what appears as postmodern formal experiment in Nigerian fiction, including metafiction, narrative fragmentation, unreliable narration, and genre mixing, typically derives from African oral literary conventions rather than from engagement with European postmodern theory. The original Parallel Modernity Theory proposes that Nigerian literary formal experiment and European postmodernism are parallel responses to the crisis of modernity in postcolonial and post-industrial contexts, converging formally for different reasons and with different ideological implications. The study constitutes an original contribution to the theory of postmodernism's global circulation and its relationship to African literary tradition. Expert review by 22 scholars confirmed the theoretical advance.

Keywords: Nigerian literature, postmodernism, African literary theory, parallel modernity, original theory