African

Literature
• African Literature is history of
Slavery, oppression or suppression,
violence and humiliations of their life.
This literature is not for entertainment,
not for aesthetic delight but such
literature disturb the mind, leads to
think about Humanity and so many
other things.
 This literature is 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 salve
mentality.
• We can’t enjoy the narration of any text
because writers have no good memories to write
then how can we expect that they write
something romantic or anything else when their
lives itself in danger or mental states are in
trauma.. They are suffering from Dominant
power and live in fear They cannot explore their
‘Feelings and Emotions’ as human beings
because they are not treated like as Human
Beings.
 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.
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.
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.
 “We were prisoners in our own villages.
Lands are grabbed by White and we worked
like Worker in our own land .” (A Grain of
Wheat)

“They come with the Bible in their hand

and we had the land. We close the eyes ,
when we opened we had the Bible and they
had the land.” ( A grain of Wheat)
Use Christianity as knife to bring control
and generate fear over Africans.
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.”
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."
 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.
Literary Forms
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.
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.
2. EPICS
 Epics are elaborate literary forms, usually
performed only by experts on special
occasions. They often recount the heroic
exploits of ancestors.
3. FUNERAL DIRGES
 Dirges, chanted during funeral
ceremonies, lament the departed, praise
his/her memory, and ask for his/her
protection.
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.
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.
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.
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.
WRITTEN LITERATURE
 Written literature includes novels,
plays, poems, hymns, and tales.
 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.
 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.
 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
 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.
 FAMOUS
LITERARY
WORKS
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.
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.
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.
 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.
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.’
 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
turnsout 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
MAJOR
WRITERS
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.
Leopold Sedar Senghor
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)
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.
Okot P’Bitek
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)
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.
Wole Soyinka
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)
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)
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.
Barbara Kimenye
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)
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)
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)
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.
Nadine Gordimer
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)