The Novel of Ideas in Postcolonial African Fiction: Philosophical Discourse, Intellectual History, and Narrative Form in Nigerian Literature

This dissertation develops an original critical framework for analysing what it terms the novel of ideas in postcolonial African fiction, examining how selected major Nigerian novels engage with and contribute to African philosophical and intellectual discourse through their narrative forms, character construction, and thematic arguments. The novel of ideas as a category has been theorised extensively in the Western literary tradition but has not been systematically applied to African fiction, where the philosophical ambitions of major novelists including Achebe, Soyinka, Obi Egbuna, and contemporary writers such as Teju Cole and Nnedi Okofor have been discussed in terms of cultural politics and postcolonial theory rather than philosophical discourse proper. The dissertation constructs an original theoretical framework that integrates African philosophy, particularly Ubuntu ethics, Yoruba metaphysics, and African political philosophy, with Western genre theory to create a model for reading African philosophical fiction on its own terms. The framework is applied through extended close readings of six Nigerian novels selected for their philosophical density and intellectual ambition: Things Fall Apart, Season of Anomy, The Famished Road, Open City, An Orchestra of Minorities, and Lagoon. Each reading demonstrates how the novel's philosophical discourse is inseparable from and mediated through specific narrative formal choices. Original contributions include the African novel of ideas framework itself, new close readings of all six texts, and a history of philosophical ideas in the Nigerian novel from independence to the present. Keywords: novel of ideas, African philosophy, Nigerian fiction, postcolonial thought, philosophical discourse.