Igbo Narrative Structure in Contemporary Short Fiction: A Comparative Stylistic Study of Selected Authors from 2018 to 2023

This study conducts a comparative stylistic analysis of Igbo narrative structure in contemporary Igbo-language short fiction published between 2018 and 2023, examining how authors negotiate traditional narrative conventions and contemporary literary innovations within the genre. Igbo short fiction has expanded rapidly as a literary form in recent years, driven by online literary magazines, digital publishing platforms, and inter-university creative writing initiatives, yet its structural and stylistic dimensions have received limited scholarly attention relative to the novel and oral literature. A corpus of sixty short stories drawn from fifteen authors across six states is assembled, with authors selected using purposive sampling for representational diversity by gender, age, educational background, and region. Stylistic analysis examines temporal structure, narrative voice, dialogue integration, proverbial embedding, and genre hybridisation patterns across the corpus. Findings reveal a generational divergence in narrative structure: authors above forty tend towards oral-tradition-patterned linear narration with communal-voice perspectives, while younger authors demonstrate greater structural experimentation, including fragmented chronology, interior monologue, and metafictional intrusion. Female authors demonstrate consistently higher proverb density per thousand words than male peers. The study proposes a structural typology of contemporary Igbo short fiction and identifies gaps for future narratological research. Keywords: Igbo short fiction, narrative structure, stylistics, contemporary literature, comparative analysis.