African Lit

1. African Literature Exploring Life Through

2. Literary Background of the African Literature The most notable literary selections are those
that capture the life and struggle of the African people. There have been significant struggles
that could have been left untouched, but writers choose to face courageous task of answering
the call of pen, and begin the process of social healing through literature. Perhaps, it is this
brilliant characteristic of African literature that enables it to shine and fulfill one universal
function of literature.

3. Literary Background of the African Literature The literary tradition of Africa became richer
than ever as it gained artistic and sophisticated expression in different languages. Traditional
languages became vehicles of cultural thoughts. Poetry, drama, novel, and short story
flourished as the literary genres. The people’s struggle to cope with – or oppose – the changing
atmosphere of their homelands was dramatically recorder in what is known as African
literature.

4. Literary Background of the African Literature Literature represents the breadth and depth
of universal experiences of man. The texts for the study of African literature shed light on
controversial issues such as racial discrimination, apartheid, political conflicts, civil wars,
feminism and gender sensitivity, and human rights issues. These have given the selections the
flavor of relevance and universality, which are outstanding themes of a meaningful literary
study.

5. NEGRITUDE  “A sudden grasp of racial identity and of cultural values and an awareness of
the wide discrepancies which existed between the promise of the French system of assimilation
and the reality.”

6. NEGRITUDE Although Africans had been writing in Portuguese as early as 1850 and a few
volumes of African writing in English and French had been published, an explosion of African
writing in European languages occurred in the mid-twentieth century. In the 1930s, black
intellectuals from French colonies living in Paris initiated a literary movement called Negritude.
Negritude emerged out of "a sudden grasp of racial identity and of cultural values and an
awareness "of the wide discrepancies which existed between the promise of the French system
of assimilation and the reality."

7. NEGRITUDE The movement's founders looked to Africa to rediscover and rehabilitate the
African values that had been erased by French cultural superiority. Negritude writers wrote
poetry in French in which they presented African traditions and cultures as antithetical, but
equal, to European culture. Out of this philosophical/literary movement came the creation of
Presence Africaine by Alioune Diop in 1947. The journal, according to its founder, was an
endeavor "to help define African originality and to hasten its introduction into the modern
world.” Other Negritude authors include Leopold Senghor, Aime Cesaire, and Leon Damas.

8. :Literary Forms

9. ORAL LITERATURE  Oral literature, also called as “orature,” have flourished in Africa for
many centuries and take a variety of forms including folk tales, myths, epics, funeral dirges,
praise poems, and proverbs.

10. 1. MYTHS  Myths usually explain the interrelationships of all things that exist, and provide
for the group and its members a necessary sense of their place in relation to their environment
and the forces that order events on earth.

11. 2. EPICS  Epics are elaborate literary forms, usually performed only by experts on special
occasions. They often recount the heroic exploits of ancestors.

12. 3. FUNERAL DIRGES  Dirges, chanted during funeral ceremonies, lament the departed,
praise his/her memory, and ask for his/her protection.

13. 4. PRAISE POEMS  Praise poems are epithets called out in reference to an object (a person,
a town, an animal, a disease, and so on) in celebration of its outstanding qualities and
achievements.

14. PRAISE POEMS Praise poems have a variety of applications and functions. Professional
groups often create poems exclusive to them. Prominent chiefs might appoint a professional
performer to compile their praise poems and perform them on special occasions. Professional
performers of praise poems might also travel from place to place and perform for families or
individuals for alms or a small fee.

15. 5. PROVERBS  Proverbs are short, witty or ironic statements, metaphorical in its
formulation which aim to communicate a response to a particular situation, to offer advice, or
to be persuasive.

16. PROVERBS The proverb is often employed as a rhetorical device, presenting its speaker as
the holder of cultural knowledge or authority. Yet, as much as the proverb looks back to an
African culture as its origin and source of authority, it creates that African culture each time it is
spoken and used to make sense of immediate problems and occasions.

17. WRITTEN LITERATURE  Written literature includes novels, plays, poems, hymns, and tales.
18. WRITTEN LITERATURE A discussion of written African literatures raises a number of
complicated and complex problems and questions that only can be briefly sketched out here.
The first problem concerns the small readership for African literatures in Africa. Over 50% of
Africa's population is illiterate, and hence many Africans cannot access written literatures. The
scarcity of books available, the cost of those books, and the scarcity of publishing houses in
Africa exacerbate this already critical situation. Despite this, publishing houses do exist in Africa,
and in countries such as Ghana and Zimbabwe, African publishers have produced and sold
many impressive works by African authors, many of which are written in African languages.

19. WRITTEN LITERATURE Scholars have identified three waves of literacy in Africa. The first
occurred in 1.Ethiopia where written works have been discovered that appeared before the
earliest literatures in the Celtic and Germanic languages of Western Europe. The second wave
of literacy moved across 2.Africa with the spread of Islam. Soon after the emergence of Islam in
the seventh century, its believers established themselves in North Africa through a series of
jihads, or holy wars. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Islam was carried into the kingdom
of Ghana. The religion continued to move eastward through the nineteenth century.

20. WRITTEN LITERATURE The encounter with 3.Europe through trade relationships,

missionary activities, and colonialism propelled the third wave of literacy in Africa. In the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, literary activity in the British colonies was conducted
almost entirely in vernacular languages. Missionaries found it more useful to translate the Bible
into local languages than to teach English to large numbers of Africans. This resulted in the
production of hymns, morality tales, and other literatures in African languages concerned with
propagating Christian values and morals. The first of these "Christian-inspired African writings"
emerged in South Africa

21. WRITTEN LITERATURE The written literatures, novels, plays, and poems in the 1950s and
60s have been described as literatures of testimony. The African authors who produced
literatures in European languages have been described as literatures of revolt. These texts
move away from the project of recuperating and reconstructing an African past and focus on
responding to, and revolting against, colonialism and corruption. These literatures are more
concerned with the present realities of African life, and often represent the past negatively.

22. FAMOUS LITERARY WORKS

23. POETRY  Paris in the Snow swings between assimilation of French, European culture or
negritude; intensified by the poet’s catholic piety.  Totem by Leopold Senghor shows the
eternal linkage of the living with the dead.  Letters to Martha by Dennis Brutus is the poet’s
most famous collection that speaks of the humiliation, the despondency, the indignity of prison
life.  Train Journey by Dennis Brutus reflects the poet’s social commitment as he reacts to
poverty around him amidst material progress especially and acutely felt by the innocent
victims, the children.

24. POETRY  Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka is the poet’s most anthologized poem
that reflects Negritude. The poetic dialogue reveals the landlady’s deep-rooted prejudice the
colored people as the caller plays up on it.  Africa by David Diop is a poem that achieves its
impact by a series of climactic sentences and rhetorical questions.  Song of Lawino by Okot
P’Bitek is a sequence of poem about the clash between African and Western values and is
regarded as the first important poem in “English to emerge from Eastern Africa.” Lawino’s song
is a pleas for the Ugandans to look back to traditional village life and African values.

25. NOVELS The Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono points out the dillusionmentt of Toundi, a boy
who leaves his parents maltreatment to enlist his services as an acolyte to a missionary. After
the priest’s death, he becomes a helper a white plantation owner, discovers the liaison of his
master’s wife, and gets murdered later in the woods as catch up with him. Toundi symbolizes
the and the coming of age, and utters despondency of the Camerooninans over the corruption
and immortality of whites. The novel is developed in the form of a recit, the French style of a
diary-like confessional work.

26. NOVELS  Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe depicts a vivid picture of Africa before the
colonization by the British people. The novel laments over the disintegration of Nigerian
society, represented in the story by Ok-wonko, once a respected chieftain who loses his
leadership and falls from grace after the coming of the whites. Cultural values are woven
around the plot to mark its authenticity: polygamy since the is Muslim; tribal law is held
supreme by the gwugwu, respected elders in the community; a man’s social status is
determined by the people’s esteem and by possession of fields of yams and physical prowess;
community life is in drinking sprees, funeral wakes, and sports festivals.

27. NOVELS No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe is a sequel to Things Fall Apart. A returning
hero fails to cope with disgrace and social pressure. Okwonko’s son has to up to the
expectations of the Umuofians, after a scholarship in London, where he reads literature, law as
expected of him, he has to dress up, he must have a car, he has to maintain his social standing,
he should not marry an Ozu, an outcast. In the end, tragic hero succumbs to temptation, he, too
receives bribes, and therefore is “no longer at ease.’

28. NOVELS  The Poor Christ of Bombay by Mongot Beti begins en medias res and exposes the
inhumanity of colonialism. The novel tells Fr. Drumont’s disillusionment after the discovery the
degradation of the native women, bethrothed, but to work like slaves in the sixa. The
government steps into picture as syphilis spreads out in the priest’s compound. It turns out that
the native whose weakness are wine, and song has been made overseer of the sixa when the
Belgian priest goes out to attend to his other mission work. Developed through recite or diary
entries, the novel is a on the failure of religion to integrate to national without first
understanding the native’s culture.

29. NOVELS  The River Between by James Ngugi shows the clash of traditional values and
contemporary ethics and mores. The Honia River is symbolically taken as metaphor of tribal and
Christian unity – the Makuyu tribe conducts Christian rites while the Kamenos hold circumcision
rituals. Muthoni, the heroine, although a new-born Christian, desires the pagan ritual. She dies
in the end but Waiyaki, the teacher, does teach vengeance against Joshua, the leader of the but
unity with them. Ngugi poses co-existence of religion people’s lifestyle at the same time
stressing the influence of education to enlighten people about their socio-political
responsibilities.

30. NOVELS  Heirs to the Past by Driss Chraili is an allegorical, parable- like novel. After 16
years of absence, the anti-hero Driss returnd to Morocco for his father’s funeral. The Signeur
his legacy via a tape recorder in which he tells the family members his last will and testament.
Each chapter in the reveals his relationship with them, and at the same time bare the
psychology of these people. His older brother, was ‘born once and had died several times’
because of his childishness and irresponsibility. His idiotic brother, Nagib, become a total
burden to the family. His mother as she for her freedom. Driss flies back to Europe completely
alienated from his people, religion, and civilization.

31. NOVELS A Few Days and Few Nights by Mbella Sonne Dipoko deals with racial prejudice. In
the novel originally written French, a Cameroonian scholar studying in France is torn between
the love of Swedish girl and a Parisian whose father owns a business establishment in Africa.
The father rules out the possibility of marriage. Therese, their commits suicide and Doumbe,
the Cammerronian, thinks only of the future of the Bibi, the Swedish who is his child. Doumbe’s
remark that the African is like a which carries it home wherever it goes implies the racial pride
and love for the native grounds.

32. NOVELS The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka is about a group of young intellectuals who
function as asrtists in their with one another as they try to place themselves in context of the
world about them.

33. MAJOR WRITERS

34. Leopold Sedar Senghor  He is a poet and statesman who was a co-founder of the
Negritude movement in African Art and Literature. He went to Paris on a scholarship and later
taught in the French school system. During these years, Senghor discovered the unmistakable
imprint of African art on modern painting sculpture, and music, which confirmed his belief in
Africa’s contribution to modern culture. Drafted during World War II, he was captured and
spent two years in Nazi concentration camp where he wrote some of his finest poems. He
became president of Senegal in 1960. His works include: Songs of Shadows, Black Offerings,
Major Elegies, and Poetical Work. He became Negritude’s foremost spokesman and edited an
anthology of French language by black African that became a seminal text of the Negritude
movement. (1906)

35. Okot P’Bitek He was born in Ugand during the British domination and was embodied in
contrast of cultues. He attended English-speaking school, but never lost touch with traditional
African values and used his wide array of talents to pursue his interests in both African and
Western cultures. Among his works are: Song of Lawino, Song of Ocol, African Religions and
Western Scholarship, Religion of the Central Luo, Horn of My Love. (1930 – 1982)

36. Wole Soyinka He is a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist, and critic who was the first black
African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He wrote of modern West Africa
in a satirical style and with tragic sense of the obstacles to human progress. He taught literature
and drama and headed theater groups at various Nigerian universities. Among his works are:
plays – A Dance of the Forests, The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of Brother Jero; novels – The
Interpreters, Season of Anomy; poems – Idanre and Other Poems, Poems from Prison, A Shuttle
in the Crypt, Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems. (1934)

37. Chinua Achebe He is a prominent Igbo novelist acclaimed for his unsentimental depictions
of the social and psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of Western customs
and values upon traditional African society. His particular concern was with the emergent Africa
at its movement of crisis. His works include: Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease,
A Man of the People, Anthills of Savanah. (1930)

38. Barbara Kimenye She wrote twelve books on children’s stories known as the Moses Series,
which are now a standard reading fare for African school children. She also worked for many
years for His Highness the Kabaka of Uganda, in the Ministry of Education and later served as
Kabaka’s librarian. She was a journalist of the Uganda Nation and later a columnist for A Nairobi
newspaper. Among her works are: Kalasanda Revisited, The Smugglers, The Money Game.
(1940)

39. Bessie Head She described the contradictions and shortcomings of pre- and post-colonial
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. Among
her works are: When Rain Clouds Gather, A Question of Power, The Collector of Treasures,
Serowe. (1937 – 1986)
40. Ousmane Sembene He is a writer and filmmaker from Senegal. His works reveal an intense
commitment to political and social change. Sembene tells his stories from out of Africa’s past
and relates their relevance and meaning for contemporary society. His works include: O My
Country, My Beautiful People, God’s Bits of Wood, The Storm. (1923)

41. Nadine Gordimer She is a South African novelist and short story writer whose major
themes was exile and alienation. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991. Gordimer
was writing by age 9 and published her first story in magazine at 15. Her works exhibit a clear,
controlled, and unsentimental technique that became her hallmark. She examines how public
events affect individual lives, how the dreams of one’s youth are corrupted, and how innocence
is lost. Amore her works are: The Soft Voice of the Serpent, Burger’s Daughter, July’s People, A
Sport of Nature, My Son’s Story, The Ultimate Safari. (1923)

*THEMES OF COLONIALISM, LIBERATION, NATIONALISM, TRADITION, DISPLACEMENT

AND ROOTLESSNESS IN AFRICAN LITERATURE This paper deals with some of the themes
in African literature such as colonialism, liberation, nationalism, tradition, displacement
and rootlessness.