Ferdinand Oyono’s Une Vie De Boy (1956) as “Bildungsroman”

Abstract

Like most all African novels before 1960 and others following there after, this novel has been seen mainly as an anit-colonial novel that belongs like many others to the genre of “littérature engagée.” This was simply because it was the perspective that best suited its European readership view of Africa.  Crying out against the ills, even in form of satire, of colonialism and European imperialism, and expansionism has in most cases overshadowed any other literary merit some of these novels may and do have, viewed from other literary perspectives, even within the European paradigm.This, this paper thinks, is the case with Oyono’s une vie de boy (1956) where the clearly hilarious naivity and innocence of Toundi, the protagonist, is used to ridicule colonialism, the colonial man, his mentality and the Christian religion.In this paper an attempt is made to focus on Toundi entirely as an evolving character, although it apparently turns out tragic, from the literary perspective of “Bildungsroman” coming-of-age-novel.