An Exploration of the Canon of Hausa Prose Fiction in Hausa Language and Translation: The Literary Contest of 1933 as a Historical Reference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The paper premises that the literary contest of 1933 has been a very important historical reference and a determining condition for the emergence of the canon of Hausa prose fiction (Furniss, 1991, 1996).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