Virgil’s Aeneid and Themes of Exile and National Identity in Nigerian Diaspora Literature

Virgil's Aeneid has long served as a template for exploring themes of exile, displacement, founding narratives, and national identity formation, themes that resonate profoundly in the context of the Nigerian diaspora experience. This study examines how Aeneid themes of exile, divine mission, and the foundation of a new homeland are echoed and transformed in selected Nigerian diaspora literary works from 2010 to 2023. A comparative literary analysis methodology was adopted, applying classical reception theory to six Nigerian diaspora novels and poetry collections, including works by Teju Cole, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chris Abani, identified as engaging themes of displacement and cultural memory. Close reading of selected passages was conducted alongside structural comparison with the Aeneid. Findings demonstrate that Nigerian diaspora writers engage themes structurally parallel to the Aeneid, including the traumatic departure from a homeland in crisis, the burden of a founding mission, and the ambivalence of cultural assimilation in a new land. However, unlike Aeneas's patrilineal and imperial mission, Nigerian diaspora protagonists typically articulate a pluralistic, anti-colonial national reimagining. The figure of Dido and her tragic abandonment is found to be particularly resonant in narratives of women navigating cultural displacement. The study concludes that the Aeneid remains a productive, if contested, intertextual resource for Nigerian diaspora writers and recommends diasporic classical reception as a course unit in Nigerian university Classical Studies programmes.

Keywords: Virgil, Aeneid, diaspora literature, exile, Nigerian literary reception