The Troubling Popularity of West African Romance Novels

Publication year
2008
Journal
Research in African Literatures
Volume
39.4
Pages
120-132
Comment

This essay is less about the romances themselves than about the problems/issues Moudileno sees arising from success of Francophone African romance e.g. it "constitutes a potential threat to the present status of francophone postcolonial literature" (122). However, there is some description of the romances:

Given that the essential plot remains constant, the Africanization of the romance is achieved through a series of variations that occur not at the structural but at the paradigmatic level. Typically, these variations concern the spatiotemporal setting, the characterization of the protagonists, and the sociocultural environment. (123)