Specific Features of Forming French-Language Literatures of Sub-Saharan Africa as the Regional Typological Commonness

The article is dedicated to basic methodological principles of studying Frenchlanguage literatures in Western and Central Africa. In 60s–70s of the 20th century, foreign Africanists-literature scholars, such as Jacques Chevrièr, and domestic ones, I.D. Nikiforova in particular, studied such literatures as a typological commonness with basic peculiar features or characteristics. The first one is the French language with the tendency for the indigenisation and creation of a “hybrid message.” The second one is the general idea-driven and artistic paradigm: the anticolonial orientation, traditional Africa presentation, protection of the authentic culture, folklore, spiritual values. As distinct from foreign Africanists, both Nikiforova and other Russian scientists emphasised the national specific character of regional literatures, having substantiated two more features that are essential: the accelerated development and parallelism or “compression of styles,” alignment of various art movements within a single temporal space. By the late 20th century, the vector of African studies moved towards the analysis of certain literatures in such typological commonness, thus enabling to determine their national distinctness to a deeper and more precise extent.