ARELLANO UNIVERSITY - PASIG CAMPUS

ANDRES BONIFACIO HIGH SCHOOL

Pag-Asa Street Barangay Caniogan City of Pasig
SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL DEPARTMENT

DYNAMIC LEARNING PLAN

SUBJECT 21ST CENTURY LITERATURE FROM THE PHILIPPINES AND THE WORLD
TOPIC African Literature
REFERENCE Five Lessons I Learned From The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind | by Emily Deneen |
Medium, African Literature: History & Characteristics - Video & Lesson Transcript |
Study.com, (63) The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind | Offical Trailer [HD] | Netflix –
YouTube, PPT – African Literature PowerPoint presentation | free to download - id:
72d1de-OWQ3N (powershow.com), African literature – Wikipedia, summary on the
development of african literature | shastine (wordpress.com), African literature |
Infoplease ,Video/Throwback: Soyinka, now 86 and his 1986 Nobel Prize - P.M. News
(pmnewsnigeria.com), Sem - 4 , P- 14 , Assignment (khushalidave8.blogspot.com) ,th
(160×240) (bing.com), The African Literature (slideshare.net)
WEEK DAY

OBJECTIVES

1. Learn the rich cultural heritage and literature of Africa.

2. Appreciate learning the cultural heritage of Africa as an
important tool for understanding its literature.
3. Create a short video showing your appreciation of African
Literature.
CONCEPTS African Literature
◦ Literature of and from Africa.
◦ Consists of a body of work in different languages and various genres.
◦ History of Slavery, oppression or suppression, violence and
humiliations of their life.
◦ X Not for entertainment, X Not for aesthetic delight but such literature
disturb the mind, leads to think about Humanity and so many other
things.
◦ X Not written out compassion but it is written out of Disgustful life
which is experienced by writers themselves.
◦ Flood of colonialism, capitalism and industrialism lead them towards
slave mentality.

LITERARY PERIODS IN AFRICAN LITERATURE

ORAL AFRICAN LITERATURE
◦ Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse.
Prose
◦ Folktale tellers use call-response techniques.
◦ A griot (praise singer) will accompany a narrative with music.
◦ Stories, dramas, riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and other
expressions
◦ (frequently employed to educate and entertain children or remind
 whole communities of their ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and
the precedents for their customs and traditions)
◦ The prose is often mythological or historical and can include tales of
the trickster character.
Poetry
◦ Oral poetry was an important part of African traditions when most of
the population was illiterate.
◦ These poems, called Isefra, were used for aspects of both religious
and secular life.
◦ religious poems included devotions, prophetic stories, and poems
honoring saints.
◦ - secular poetry could be about celebrations like births and
weddings, or accounts of heroic warriors.
◦ Oral literature or folktales continue to be broadcast on the radio in the
native language.

Ali A. Mazrui and others mention

Seven conflicts as themes:
(clash between…)
-Africa's past and present,
- tradition and modernity,
-indigenous and foreign,
-individualism and community,
-soc
PRE-COLONIAL AFRICAN LITERATURE
◦ Epics long narrative that relates deeds of larger-than-life hero who
embodies traits of society.
◦ The epic, like the heroic poem, contains historical references such as
place names and events; in the heroic poem these are not greatly
developed.
◦ Proverb a short, traditional saying that expresses some obvious truth
or familiar experience.
◦ Convey accumulated cultural wisdom
◦ Often use literary elements (metaphors,
alliteration, parallelism, rhyme)
◦ Oral traditions stories passed from generation to generation
through word of mouth.
◦ Dilemma/enigma tale moral tale that ends with question to allow
audience to share judgments
◦ Chain/cumulative tale formulaic, each incident
is repeated as new incidents are added
◦ The 12 days of Christmas
◦ A single extended joke
◦ Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. In Ethiopia,
there is a substantial literature written in Ge'ez going back at least to
the fourth century AD; the best-known work in this tradition is
the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings."
Trickster Stories (African Folktale)
◦ Small animal uses its wits to survive encounters with larger creatures.
◦ Examples of animal tricksters include Anansi, a spider in the folklore
of the Ashanti people of Ghana; Ijàpá, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore
of Nigeria; and Sungura, a hare found in central and East African
folklore
COLONIAL AFRICAN LITERATURE
The African works best known in the West from the periods of colonization
and the slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah
Equiano's The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789).
Africans exposed to Western languages began to write in those tongues.
In 1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (also known as Ekra-Agiman) of
the Gold Coast (now Ghana) published what is probably the first African novel
written in English, Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation.Although the
work moves between fiction and political advocacy, its publication and
positive reviews in the Western press mark a watershed moment in African
literature.
African plays written in English began to emerge. Herbert Isaac Ernest
Dhlomo of South Africa published the first English-language African play, The
Girl Who Killed to Save: Nongqawuse the Liberator in 1935. In 1962, Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong'o of Kenya wrote the first East African drama, The Black Hermit, a
cautionary tale about "tribalism" (discrimination between African tribes).
POST COLONIAL AFRICAN LITERATURE
Independence in the 1950s and 1960s,
African literature has grown dramatically in quantity and in recognition
African writers in this period wrote both in Western languages
(notably English, French, and Portuguese) and in traditional African languages
such as Hausa.
Other themes in this period include social problems such as corruption, the
economic disparities in newly independent countries, and the rights and roles
of women.
Female writers are today far better represented in published African literature
than they were prior to independence.
ialism and capitalism,
-development, and self-reliance
-Africanity and humanity.
In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first post-independence African writer to win
the Nobel Prize in literature. Previously, Algerian-born Albert Camus had been
awarded the prize in 1957.
CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN LITERATURE
There are a lot of literary productions in Africa since the beginning of the
current decade (2010), even though readers do not always follow in large
numbers. One can also notice the appearance of certain writings that break
with the academic style.
Shortage of literary critics
Literary events seem to be very fashionable, including literary awards, some of
which can be distinguished by their original concepts.
The case of the Grand Prix of Literary Associations is quite illustrative. Brittle
Paper, founded by Ainehi Edoro, has been described as "Africa’s leading
literary journal".
Brittle Paper is an online literary magazine for readers of African Literature.
We are Africa’s premier online literary brand inspiring readers to explore and
celebrate African literary experiences in all its diversity.
The Grand Prix of Literary Associations (GPLA) were launched in 2013 in
Cameroon, in partnership with Brasseries du Cameroun and sponsorship by
Castel Beer. The GPLA are defined as bilingual English-and-
French literary prizes, some being awarded on the proposals
of literary associations, especially in the Research and Belles-Lettres
categories.