When a Modern Hero Tramples the Epic World: Ahmadou Kourouma and the Ideological Manipulation of Epic in En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages

Abstract

This article explores the use of the epic Sundiata in Ahmadou Kourouma's novel En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages. The Sundiata epic was initially harnessed by Négritude to indicate a sense of possibility for a positive post-independence political situation. However, when that forecast did not come to pass, use of the Sundiata epic changed, as this novel demonstrates. I assert that Kourouma's parodic use of the epic indicates a disillusionment with the political situation of the postcolony. As Kourouma compares his corrupt big-man politician protagonist parodically to the epic's eponymous hero, a new usage of the epic genre emerges, one which strikingly goes against the grain of previous uses of the genre.