NEW ENGAGEMENTS IN CAMEROON LITERATURE: The Other Side Of The Bridge

By Bate Besong

Part I

Preface To Discourse
No full account of the rhizome density of our national literature is possible - as the editors of Patrimoine have so kindly guessed - without adequate and appropriate reference to the alternative writing that has given life to an essential, yet repressed and denied aspect of Cameroonian reality.

It is writing that is a reflection of the multifarious nature of Cameroonian reality and the readiness to decisively take a progressive and radical march towards it that distinguishes new Anglophone literature from the apologetic perspective and transcendental lore of bourgeois sylvan pretensions.

To the Greek celebrated comic poet, Aristophanes, the dramatist should not only offer pleasure but should, besides that be a teacher of morality and a political adviser (Cited in Augusto Boal, 1997:111).

On the Cameroonian muses crowded pantheon therefore, we too have been firm of feet as your own Fabien Eboussi Boulaga, Guillaume Oyono Mbia, Charly Gabriel Mbock, Gaston Paul Effa, Jacques Fame Ndongo, Hubert Mono Ndjana, Ferdinand Leopold Oyono, the immortal Mongo Beti. (But, Ignorance, as Plato remarked, is at the root of most misfortunes).

Our literature has never been a substitute for social action, but being an integral part of the spiritual afflatus of man and a reflection of his psyche, it has definitely been an embodiment of cultural ideology. As an alternative aesthetic that has been held hostage to the received wisdom of a Taleban critical establishment which requires the writer to make artistic and political compromises; to kow-tow, in order to pass, the literature from the other side of the bridge, forcefully registered in the national consciousness and captured the imagination as a unique phenomenon barely a decade ago (See Chris Dunton; 1998, S.A. Ambanasom, 2001).

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Comments

[EBAI MOSES EFFIMAKA]

Mr. B.B.i have alwas been a keen reader of your works. And i want to believe that i am one of those cameroonians who have a complete collection of your works. I do enjoy reading them not for pleasure but for accademic purpose.
I am yet to defend a D.E.A.thesis on cameroon drama titled: BATE BESONG :The QUEST FOR THE ANGLOPHONE IDENTITY.
A STUDY OF SOME OF HIS PLAYS.
Dr.Please i am in search of a document on the foumban conference.Can you help me say.