INTRODUCTION TO

AFRICAN LITERATURE
(ENG. LIT. 5- SURVEY OF AFRO-ASIAN LITERATURE)

PREPARED BY:

MR. ASKIN VILLARIAS

“IF ART DOESN'T MAKE US BETTER, THEN
WHAT ON EARTH IS IT FOR?”
-ALICE WALKER, AFRICAN-AMERICAN AUTHOR, POET AND ACTIVIST
 AFRICA
• It is the second largest continent after Asia.
• It is separated from Asia by the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Suez, and the Red
Sea, and from Europe by the Strait of Gibraltar and Mediterranean Sea.
• It is bounded by Atlantic Ocean on the west and Indian Ocean on the
east.
• It is also surrounded with offshore islands (e.g. Madagascar, Mauritius,
Reunion, Zanzibar, Pemba, Seychelles and the Comoros).
• The offshore islands found in North Atlantic Ocean are the Canary
Islands, Cape Verde Islands and Madeira Islands; Ascension Island and
Saint Helena are found in the South Atlantic.
• Pagalu, Bioko and Sao Tame and Principe are situated in the Gulf of
Guinea.
GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION
OF AFRICA
 AFRICA
• It is where the earliest known protohuman fossils have been found,
specifically in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia
• It is also the home of one of the oldest world’s civilization whose
influence spread to south by the 1st millennium B. C., at the same
time as the Phoenicians were founding Carthage and other city
states along the Mediterranean coast north of the Atlas
Mountains.
• It was known as the “Dark Continent,” whose coastal areas were
colonized by Europeans to be re-established as trading stations
during the 15th and 16th centuries.
• The independence of its 49 nations during the World War II had left
Africa with defined boundaries, a diversity of political systems
and economies dependent upon the industrialized world.
 AFRICAN PEOPLE
• Africa contains a complex mosaic of people, languages and
cultures.
• Few of its states are ethnically homogeneous, and few have
developed national unity for a century-long prevalence of
traditional values.
• Originally, Africans identified with members of their own tribe
or nation and avoided or competed with those who spoke a
different language and of different culture.
• The imposition of colonial boundaries without regard for the
indigenous cultural mosaic further divided the African
people.
 AFRICAN LANGUAGES
• The number of languages spoken in Africa has been variously estimated
at between 800 and 1,700.
• The generally recognized major stocks were as follows: Afro-asiatic
languages, Click languages, Niger-Congo languages, Sudanic
languages and Austronesian languages.
• Afro-Asiatic languages- languages dominant in North Africa and the
Horn which include Berber, Kushitic, Semitic, Chad and Coptic
languages.
• Click languages- languages characterized with their implosive click
sounds which include Khoisan being spoken by the Khoikhoi of
southern Africa.
• Niger-Congo languages- languages that cover almost all of West Africa
south of Sahara and most of the Congo Basin and southern Africa
which include Hausa, Peul, Wolof, Swahili, Tsonga, and Bemba.
 AFRICAN LANGUAGES
• Sudanic languages- languages including Kanuri,
Songhai, Turkana and Masai
• Austronesian languages- languages introduced
from Southeast Asia about 2,000 years ago
 AFRICAN RELIGIONS
• The dominant religion of Northern Africa is Islam, which replaced
Christianity in the 7th century and spread west across the
Sahara and into the equatorial zones.
• Many denominations are present including a number of
indigenous churches as approximately two-fifths of the African
population follows traditional religions and animism.
• The Christian churches claim a membership of some 140 million
Africans of whom 55 percent are Protestants. Christianity’s
earliest hold in Africa was in Egypt and Ethiopia, home of the
Coptic church.
 AFRICAN EDUCATION
• Education standards, programs and facilities vary considerably in
terms of class, ethnicity, sex and location.
• In all African countries, literacy rates for women are lower than
those for men, more males than females attend primary
schools, and urban education is superior to rural.
• The richest countries invest more in education than the poorest,
and in most states, secondary school enrolment is less than half
the primary school enrolments
• Due to the lack of prestigious universities in many African
countries, qualified students often attend U. S. and European
universities.
AFRICAN LITERATURE
 AFRICAN LITERATURE
• African literature comprises the oral and written works of the
continent, composed in either African languages or foreign ones,
and is still developing distinctive styles.
• The widespread African oral tradition is rich in folktales, myths,
riddles and proverbs that do not only convey an imaginative view
of the world but also serve a religious, social and educational
function, having a significant effect on the written literature.
• Unlike other continents, black Africa has no ancient traditions of
written literature. The earliest examples are Muslim-inspired
writings from North Africa.
• Little African literature has existed for more than a hundred years.
 AFRICAN LITERATURE
• Written, creative literature novels, short stories, plays and poetry
have been produced in about 50 of the thousand languages spoken
in Africa.
• Because most early works were published by missionary presses, they
are heavily imbued with Christian didacticism.
• The first full-length narratives in Sesotho, Yoruba and Ibo were
modelled on John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
• The first written literature consisted of translated church hymns and
retold biblical stories.
• Secular literature started to emerge when the African literature
became literate and government agencies began to publish books,
newspapers and magazines. These literary pieces focus on problems
of personal adjustments to Western ways or modern institutions.
• Topics such as sex and politics are seldom explored, possibly because
publication is strictly censored in many countries
THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
It is a 1678 Christian allegory written
by John Bunyan. It is regarded as one
of the most significant works of
religious English literature, has been
translated into more than 200
languages, and has never been out of
print. It has also been cited as
the first novel written in English.
 AFRICAN LITERATURE
• The first major works in West Africa appeared in the 1950s at the end
of the colonial era and were primarily concerned with reinterpreting
African history from an indigenous point of view that stressed the
dignity of the African past.
• Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958) and Amos Tutuola’s
The Palm-Wine Drunkard (1952) documents the disintegration of a
rural community under the impact of Westernization and is a classic
statement of this archetypal theme.
• After independence, the West African literary emphasis changed
from preoccupation with the past to a confrontation with the
present.
• Under South African apartheid, writing in English by blacks and by
Coloureds (racially mixed South Africans) was impeded by racial
oppression and censorships.
 NEGRITUDE
• It is the literary movement, whose name literally means
“blackness,” of the 1930s-1960s that began among
French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in
Paris as a protest against French colonial rule and the
policy of assimilation.
• Its leading figure was Leopold Sedar Senghor ( 1 st
President of the Republic of Senegal in 1960), who
along with Aime Caesar from Martinique and Leo
Damas from French Guinea, began to examine Western
values critically and to reassess African Culture
• The movement largely faded in the early 1960s when its
political and cultural objectives had been achieved in
most African countries.
•
 NEGRITUDE
• The basic ideas behind Negritude include:
a) Africans must look to their own cultural heritage
to determine the values and traditions that are
most useful in the modern world.
b) Committed writers should use African subject
matter and poetic traditions and should excite a
desire for political freedom.
c) Negritude encompasses the whole of African
cultural, economic, social and political values.
d) The value and dignity of African traditions and
people must be asserted
AFRICAN POETRY
 1) PARIS IN THE SNOW
•
•
• It swings between assimilation of
French, European culture or negritude
intensified by the poet’s catholic piety.
2) TOTEM BY LEOPOLD
SENGHOR
• It shows the eternal linkage of
the living with the dead.
3) LETTERS TO MARTHA
BY DENNIS BRUTUS
• It is the poet’s most famous
collection that speaks of the
humiliation, the despondency,
the indignity of prison life.
4) TRAIN JOURNEY BY
DENNIS BRUTUS
• It reflects the poet’s social
commitment, as he reacts to
the poverty around him
amidst material progress
especially and actually felt by
the innocent victims, the
children.
5) AFRICA BY DAVID DIOP
• It is a poem that achieves its
impact by a series of
climactic sentences and
rhetorical questions.
AFRICAN NOVELS
1) THE HOUSEBOY BY
FERDINAND OYONO
• It points out the
disillusionment of Toundi, a
boy who leaves his parents
maltreatment to enlist his
services as an acolyte to a
foreign missionary.
2) THINGS FALL APART BY
CHINUA ACHEBE
• It depicts a vivid picture of Africa
before the colonization by the
British. The title is an epigraph
from Yeats’ The Second
Coming:

things fall apart

the center cannot hold
mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world
3) NO LONGER AT EASE
BY CHINUA ACHEBE
• It is a sequel to Things Fall
Apart and the title of which
is alluded to Elliot’s The
Journey of the Magi:

We returned to our places, these

kingdoms
But no longer at ease here, in
the old dispensation
4) THE POOR CHRIST OF
BOMBA BY MONGO BETI
• It begins in media res and
expresses the humanity of
colonialism.
• The novel tells of Fr. Drumont’s
disillusionment after the
discovery of the degradation of
the native women betrothed,
but forced to work like slaves
in the sixa.
5) THE RIVER BETWEEN
BY JAMES NGUGI WA
THIONG’O
• It shows the clash of
traditional values and
contemporary ethics and
mores.
6) HEIRS TO THE PAST BY
DRISS CHRAIBI
• It is an allegorical, parable-like
novel.
• After 16 years of absence, the
anti-hero Driss Ferdi returns to
Morocco for his father’s funeral.
The Signeur leaves his legacy
via a tape recorder in which he
tells the family members his
last will and testament.
7) A FEW DAYS AND FEW
NIGHTS BY MBELLA SONNE
DIPOKO
• It deals with racial prejudice.
• In the novel, originally written
in French, a Cameroonian
scholar studying in France is
torn between the love of
Swedish girl and a Parisienne
show father owns a business
establishment in Africa.
8) THE INTERPRETERS BY
WOLE SOYINKA
• It is a group of young
individuals who function as
artists in their talks with
one another as they try to
place themselves in the
context of the world about
them.
AFRICAN WRITERS AND
POETS
LEOPOLD SENGHOR (1906)
• He is a poet and statesman
who was confounder of
the Negritude movement
in African art and
literature.
•
 SENGHOR’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• Naked Woman
• Songs of Shadow
• Black Offerings
• Major Elegies
• Poetical Work
•
OKOT P’BITEK (1930)
•
• He was born in Uganda
during the British
domination and was
embodied in a contrast of
cultures.
P’BITEK’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
•
• Song of Lawino
• Song of Ocol
• African Religions
• Western Scholarship
• Religion of the Central Luo
• Horn Of My Love
WOLE SOYINKA (1934)
• He is perhaps the foremost English-
language poet and certainly the most
celebrated playwright of black Africa.
• His work earned him the 1986 Nobel
Prize for literature – the first
international honor in literature ever
won by a black African.
• Combining Western dramatic forms with
the music, dance and mime of Africa,
his plays achieve a ritualistic power
and demonstrate the fundamental
African concern with “numinous”
boundaries: those between the human
and the divine, between life and
death.
SOYINKA’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• Swamp Dwellers- produced in
London in 1958
• Death and the King’s Horseman
(1975)
• Opera Wonyosi (1979)
• Play of Giants (1984)
NADINE GORDIMER (1923)
• She is a South African novelist
and short story writer whose
major theme was exile and
alienation. She received the
Nobel Prize for Literature in
1991.
 GORDIMER’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• The Soft Voice of the
Serpent
• Burger’s Daughter
• July’s People
• A Sport of Nature
• My Son’s Story
•
BESSIE HEAD (1937)
• She described the
contradictions and
shortcomings of pre- and
postcolonial African society in
morally didactic novels and
stories.
• She suffered rejection and
alienation from an early age
being born of an illegal union
between her white mother
and black father.
 HEAD’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• When Rain Clouds Gather
• A Question of Power
• The Collector of Treasures
• Serowe
•
BARBARA KIMENYE (1940)
• She wrote twelve books on
children’s stories known
as the Moses series which
are now standard reading
fare for African school
children.
KIMENYE’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• Kalasandra Revisited
• The Smugglers
• The Money Game
•
CHINUA ACHEBE (1930)
• He is a Nigerian novelist and poet,
whose first novel, Things Fall Apart
(1958), set the theme for his
subsequent work: the impact of
Western influences on traditional
African society.
• His works are unsentimental, often
ironic, they vividly portray tribal
culture and the very speech of the
Ibo people.
• Since 1971, he has been co-editor of
Okike, one of Africa’s most influential
literary magazines.
ACHEBE’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• Things Fall Apart (1958)
• The Arrow of God (1964)
• A Man of the People (1966)
• Girls at War (1972)
• Christmas in Biafra and
Other Poems (1973)
•
JOHN PEPPER CLARK (APRIL 6,
1935)
• He is a Nigerian poet, dramatist, and
literary critic who contributed
significantly to the Nigerian
renaissance of the late 50s and
early 60s.
CLARK’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES
• Ozidi (1966)
• Song of a Goat (1961)
• A Decade of Tongues
JAMES NGUGI WA THIONG’ O
(JANUARY 5, 1938)
• He is considered as the most
important East African
novelist.
• Educated in both Kenya and
England, he taught literature
for many years.
NGUGI WA THIONG’ O’S LITERARY
MASTERPIECES

• Weep Not Child (1964) and The River Between

(1965)- concerned with the impact of
colonialism, Christianity and rebellion on the
East African people, and are influenced by
Chinua Achebe’s realism.
• A Grain of Wheat (1967)- Ngugi’s most successful
novel about Mau Mau rebellion
• Petals of Blood (1977)- his novel that highlighted
his criticism on the Kenya government, leading
him to imprisonment (1978-1979)
• Detain (1981)- his prison diary
• Will Marry When I Want
• Devil on the Cross
• Decolonising the Mind (1986)
“BY CRAWLING, A CHILD LEARNS TO
STAND.
-an African Proverb