Nigerian literary critic, Professor Abiola Irele dies in US

Nigerian academic and literary critic, Professor Francis
Abiola Irele, is dead. He was 81

Irele, once described as the doyen of Africanist literary
scholars worldwide, died in the United States on Sunday.

He was born in Ora (present Edo State, Nigeria) in 1936 and once
served as the Provost of Kwara State University in Ilorin,
Nigeria.

Before moving back to Nigeria, Irele was a Visiting Professor of
African and African American Studies and of Romance Languages and
Literatures at Harvard University.

Though born in Ora, Irele moved to Enugu very early in his life.
While he was Edo and was born in an area in which Ora was
predominantly spoken, the first language he learned was Igbo; he
learned Igbo from the servants who worked for his father and took
care of him growing up.

After moving to Lagos in 1940, he began to speak Yoruba. In
1943, after a fight between his parents, Irele returned to Ora with
his mother where he picked up Ora and developed a fluency in the
language over the course of a year.

However, after returning to Lagos in 1944 to live with his
father, he began to predominantly speak Yoruba and maintained it as
his ethnic identification.

Irele’s first encounters with literature was through folk tales
and the oral poets that recounted “raras” in the streets. During
the years of his formal education, Irele began to read & comment now English
literature.

He helped to expound upon the understanding of Négritude first
theorized by Léopold Sédar Senghor in his article “What is
Negritude?” featured in Tejumola Olaniyan and Ato Quayson’s African
Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory.

In his article, Irele defines Négritude as “the literary and
ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals, which
took form as a distinctive and significant aspect of the
comprehensive reaction of the black man to the colonial
situation…”.

In his collection of essays Négritude et condition africaine,
Irele explores the question of African thought. He begins by
rejecting the notion of ideological difference between anglophone
and francophone Africa. He aims to root African progress in the
present and not in a romanticized past.

Nigerian academic and literary critic, Professor Francis
Abiola Irele, is dead. He was 81

Irele, once described as the doyen of Africanist literary
scholars worldwide, died in the United States on Sunday.

He was born in Ora (present Edo State, Nigeria) in 1936 and once
served as the Provost of Kwara State University in Ilorin,
Nigeria.

Before moving back to Nigeria, Irele was a Visiting Professor of
African and African American Studies and of Romance Languages and
Literatures at Harvard University.

Though born in Ora, Irele moved to Enugu very early in his life.
While he was Edo and was born in an area in which Ora was
predominantly spoken, the first language he learned was Igbo; he
learned Igbo from the servants who worked for his father and took
care of him growing up.

After moving to Lagos in 1940, he began to speak Yoruba. In
1943, after a fight between his parents, Irele returned to Ora with
his mother where he picked up Ora and developed a fluency in the
language over the course of a year.

However, after returning to Lagos in 1944 to live with his
father, he began to predominantly speak Yoruba and maintained it as
his ethnic identification.

Irele’s first encounters with literature was through folk tales
and the oral poets that recounted “raras” in the streets. During
the years of his formal education, Irele began to read & comment now English
literature.

He helped to expound upon the understanding of Négritude first
theorized by Léopold Sédar Senghor in his article “What is
Negritude?” featured in Tejumola Olaniyan and Ato Quayson’s African
Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory.

In his article, Irele defines Négritude as “the literary and
ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals, which
took form as a distinctive and significant aspect of the
comprehensive reaction of the black man to the colonial
situation…”.

In his collection of essays Négritude et condition africaine,
Irele explores the question of African thought. He begins by
rejecting the notion of ideological difference between anglophone
and francophone Africa. He aims to root African progress in the
present and not in a romanticized past.