Exploring Life Through

African Literature
 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.
 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. Around a
hundred languages are widely used for
inter-ethnic
communication. Arabic, Somali,Berb
er,Oromo, Igbo, Amharic,
Swahili, Hausa, Manding, Fulani
and Yoruba are spoken by tens of
millions of people.
 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
recorded in what is known as
African literature.
 The texts for the study of African
literature shed light on controversial
issues such as racial discrimination,
apartheid (was a system of institutionalized
racial segregation and discrimination in South
Africa between 1948 and 1991), political
conflicts, civil wars, feminism and gender
sensitivity, and human rights issues.
 NEGRITUDE
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."
 NEGRITUDE
 the self-affirmation of black people,
or the affirmation of the values of
civilization of something defined as
“the black world”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/negritude/
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.”
Literary Forms
WRITTEN
ORAL LITERATURE
LITERATURE
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.
 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.
 WRITTEN
LITERATURE
Written literature includes
novels, plays, poems, hymns,
and tales.
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.
The encounter with 3.Europe
through trade relationships,
missionary activities, and
colonialism propelled the
third wave of literacy in
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 WOR
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.
POETRY
 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
against 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.
POETRY
 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 recapture African values.
NOVELS
The Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono points out the
dillusionment of Toundi, a boy who leaves his parents
maltreatment to enlist his services as an acolyte to a
foreign missionary. After the priest’s death, he becomes a
helper of a white plantation owner, discovers the liaison of
his master’s wife, and gets murdered later in the woods as
they catch up with him. Toundi symbolizes the
disenchantment and the coming of age, and utters
despondency of the Camerooninans over the corruption
and immortality of the 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.
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 live
up to the expectations of the Umuofians, after winning
a scholarship in London, where he reads literature, not
law as expected of him, he has to dress up, he must
have a car, he has to maintain his social standing, and
he should not marry an Ozu, an outcast. In the end, the
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 of the degradation of
the native women, bethrothed, but forced
to work like slaves in the sixa.
 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 not teach
vengeance against Joshua, the leader of the Kamenos,
but unity with them.
NOVELS
Heirs to the Past by Driss Chraili is an
allegorical, parable-like novel. After 16 years of
absence, the anti-hero Driss Ferdi returnd 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. Each chapter in the novel reveals his
relationship with them, and at the same time
lays bare the psychology of these people.
NOVELS
 A Few Days and Few Nights by Mbella
Sonne Dipoko 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 Parisian
whose father owns a business
establishment in Africa.
NOVELS
 The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka is
about a group of young intellectuals who
function as asrtists in their talks with one
another as they try to place themselves
in the 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. His works include:
Songs of Shadows, Black Offerings, Major
Elegies, and Poetical Work.
Okot P’Bitek
He was born in Ugand during
the British domination and was
embodied in contrast of cultues. 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.
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 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. 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. 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 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. Amorg
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)