Examining the Reception of the Aeneid in West African Postcolonial Literature: An Intertextual Analysis

Virgil's Aeneid, as an epic of national foundation, exile, and imperial destiny, has been both embraced and subverted in postcolonial literary traditions globally, and its specific reception in West African literature, including Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Senegalese writing, constitutes a rich but underexamined intertextual field. This study conducts a systematic intertextual analysis of Aeneid reception in West African postcolonial literature from 1960 to 2023. A comparative intertextual methodology informed by classical reception theory was adopted, identifying a corpus of 28 West African literary works (novels, poetry collections, and plays) through systematic literature searches and expert consultation, and subjecting them to close intertextual reading against the Aeneid. The analysis focuses on the epic's structural elements (the descent to the underworld, the founding violence, the loss of Creusa, the tragedy of Dido) and their transformations in West African texts. Findings reveal that Dido's narrative is the most frequently engaged Aeneid episode in West African literature, functioning as a site of anti-colonial feminist revision. The founding violence of Aeneas's mission is consistently reinterpreted as an allegory of colonial destruction. The descent to the underworld is transformed into journeys through ancestral memory and postcolonial trauma. The study provides the first systematic intertextual survey of Aeneid reception in West African literature, filling a significant gap in both Virgil reception studies and African literary scholarship.

Keywords: Virgil, Aeneid, West African literature, postcolonial reception, intertextual analysis