Introduction to Afro-Asian

Literature
Francis F. Diaz
 Asia, what?
Asia, the world’s largest and most diverse continent. It occupies the eastern four-fifths of the giant
Eurasian landmass. Asia is more a geographic term than a homogeneous continent, and the use of
the term to describe such a vast area always carries the potential of obscuring the
enormous diversity among the regions it encompasses. Asia has both the highest and the lowest
points on the surface of Earth, has the longest coastline of any continent, is subject overall to the
world’s widest climatic extremes, and, consequently, produces the most varied forms of vegetation
and animal life on Earth. In addition, the peoples of Asia have established the broadest variety of
human adaptation found on any of the continents.
 Where did Asia get its name?
The name Asia is ancient, and its origin has been variously explained. The Greeks used it to
designate the lands situated to the east of their homeland. It is believed that the name may be
derived from the Assyrian word asu, meaning “east.” Another possible explanation is that it was
originally a local name given to the plains of Ephesus, which ancient Greeks and Romans extended
to refer first to Anatolia (contemporary Asia Minor, which is the western extreme of mainland
Asia), and then to the known world east of the Mediterranean Sea. When Western explorers
reached South and East Asia in early modern times, they extended that label to the whole of the
immense landmass.
 Southeast Asian Literature
The term Southeast Asia refers to the huge peninsula of
Indochina and the extensive archipelago of what is
sometimes called the East Indies. The region can be
subdivided into mainland Southeast Asia and insular
Southeast Asia. The political units contained in this region
are Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia,
Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and
the Philippines. The Philippines originally was not
included, because Philippine history has not followed the
general historical pattern of Southeast Asia, but, because
of its geographic position and the close affinities of
its cultures with the cultures of Southeast Asia, it is now
usually regarded as the eastern fringe of Southeast Asia.
The entire region of Southeast Asia, with the single exception of Thailand, fell under colonial rule,
and Thailand itself survived more as a buffer state than as a truly independent kingdom. At the
courts of the kings of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, which fell under French suzerainty, and in the
palaces of the sultans of the British Malay states, vernacular literatures managed to survive for a
time; but since these literatures had long ago ceased to develop—as a result of harassment by the
Thai in the case of Laos and Cambodia, by the Portuguese in the case of Malaya, and by the
French in the case of Vietnam—they soon became moribund. In all of Southeast Asia, except
Burma and Thailand, the vernacular languages themselves lost their status, as the languages of the
colonial rulers became the languages of administration and of a new elite. A revival of interest in
the native languages and literatures occurred only toward the close of the colonial period, as a
consequence of national movements for freedom.
 East Asian Literature
A useful start to understanding “world literature” in
East Asia is to think in terms of cross-cultural
interactions within the region. A historical
perspective demands that we start with China. The
long and powerful Chinese cultural hegemony,
especially through the Confucian schools of thought,
left a lasting impact on the development of China’s
neighbors.
The Confucian canon is indeed “the repository of a cultural grammar” which “constituted the
interpretive community of those with an orthodox education in East Asia” (Lee 2003: 5). Chinese
literary norms, canons of poetry, lyrical prose, and classical novels have shaped both the
ideological consciousness and the literary taste of the gentry and ruling class of East Asian
countries, especially Japan and Korea.
When modernization and westernization exposed
China, Japan, and the entire East Asian region to new
cultural imaginations from the later nineteenth century
on, Anglo-European influences prevailed. Modern
literatures in East Asia subsequently developed along a
more dichotomized East/West, traditional/modern path.
During its colonization of Korea (1910-45) and Taiwan
(1895-1945), Japan cast a different spell on the
literatures of those two countries with its own variant of
modern aesthetics.
The two world wars of the twentieth century oriented East
Asia towards American culture, though writers of Mainland
China were denied access to this during the Cold War
period. The spread of “world literature” is heavily
dependent on translation. In the case of East Asia, though,
the language of literature was largely monolingual in
classical times, as Chinese was the lingua franca in Korea,
Japan, and Vietnam. When Chinese civilization arrived in
those countries, none had a script of its own. The Chinese
writing system, coupled with the sophisticated Confucian
bureaucracy, became the vehicle of development. It was not
until Western modernization began to take hold of the region
that translation became pivotal for both literary and cultural
developments.
Recent decades of technological advancement have triggered fundamental changes in cultural
behavior, giving rise to more dialogical, global, and virtual encounters. The literatures of East Asia
are drawing inspirations from pluralistic sources, within as well as beyond their own region.
 Middle East Asian Literature
Twenty-first-century Middle Eastern (primarily Arabic,
Persian, and Turkish) literature encompasses a rich
variety of genres, whose maturation has profited from
internal and external influences upon this literature over
the past fourteen centuries. Modern Arabic literature
addresses the full range of human experience, often
through a realist approach that employs the Arabic
language in ways ranging from the most formal to the
most colloquial. While Turkish and Persian literatures
have both followed individual trajectories since the
modern period, they too evince a similar range with
respect to genre and employment of language.
Although today these three literatures appear as discrete entities, they share a long early religious,
cultural, and political history. While pre-Islamic Persian and Turkish literatures would prove
influential when taken up by writers in the first few centuries after Islam, pre-Islamic Arabic
literature provided the first literary model.
 African Literature
African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African
languages together with works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written
literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic area than is oral literature, is most characteristic
of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean. In
particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what is
now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. There
are also works written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is
the one part of Africa where Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered
traditional. Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward.
Themes in the literary traditions of contemporary Africa are worked out frequently within the
strictures laid down by the imported religions Christianity and Islam and within the struggle
between traditional and modern, between rural and newly urban, between genders, and between
generations. The oral tradition is clearly evident in the popular literature of the marketplace and the
major urban centers, created by literary storytellers who are manipulating the original materials
much as oral storytellers do, at the same time remaining faithful to the tradition. Some of the early
writers sharpened their writing abilities by translating works into African languages; others
collected oral tradition; most experienced their apprenticeships in one way or another within
the contexts of living oral traditions.