REBIRTH OF LITERARY AESTHETICS: A STYLISTICS READING OF SONY LABOU TANSI’S AND ALAIN MABANCKOU’S SELECTED NOVELS

ABSTRACT: African francophone literature has gained prominence since its inception with the publication ofRené Maran‟s Batoula: un véritable roman nègre before the attainment of independence by most Africannations. Representing the challenges and the struggles of the newly independent states became a focal point inthe presentation of thematic thrusts, with movement from colonial criticisms to combatting the virus ofdictatorship among other woes of the continent. Female arrival in the literary scene also paved way for feministmovement which underscores the need of women liberation from patriarchal settings, underlining issues ofinheritance, favouritism of male offspring, male chauvinism and incessant labouring of women in conjugalsettings. With the presentation of thematic thrusts from one generation of writers to the other came divergentmanner of depicting realties in fictions, a focal point for the birth of true aesthetics from stylisticiansperspective. Focussing on how message is relayed instead of the message ensures aesthetic in committedAfrican literature. Thus, adopting semiotics for meaning recovery in selected texts and the French method ofexplication de texte, this study investigates the birth of literary aesthetics between two different generations ofwriters, who share similar thematic and stylistics preoccupations as mentor and mentee semantically. Literaryaesthetics is captured in the form of allusions and neologisms as stylistic tools contributing to meaningprojection in selected texts as well as underlining signatures of the writers. Hence, this study investigates therole of coinages in meaning projection semantically.

Keywords: Stylistics, Aesthetics, Neologism, Allusion, mentor, mentee, mentorship.