An Exploration of the Canon of Hausa Prose Fiction in Hausa Language and Translation: The Literary Contest of 1933 as a Historical Reference
Abstract
The paper premises that the literary contest of 1933 has been a very important
historical reference and a determining condition for the emergence of the canon
of Hausa prose fiction (Furniss, 1991, 1996). As a consequence, my exploration
is going to be directed first toward the role of the British colonial
administration as the organizer of the literary contest and then toward the
role played by the university critics in transforming the winning essays into a
corpus of literary masterpieces, thus creating some of the conditions for the
emergence and consolidation of the canon of the Hausa prose fiction in both
the Hausa language and in translation into English