LPW 02 Lesson 4: African Literature

African literature

consists of a body of work in different languages and various genres, ranging from oral literature (orature) to literature written in colonial languages (French, Portuguese, and English).

Egypt (3000 - 343 BC)

African literature started in _________

The Golden Age (300 - 1600 AD)

Oral traditions, epics, praise poems, fables, proverbs

Middle Ages

Arabic was introduced to Africa

1800s

coming of the alphabet

1934

the birth of Negritude movement; writers committed to look into their own culture, traditions and values that can be applied to the modern world

Pre-colonial Literature

Colonial Literature

Post-colonial Literature

African literature is divided into three (3) parts:

Pre-Colonial Literature

• Epic of Sundiata - composed in medieval Mali

• Epid of Dinga - from Old Ghana Empire

• Kebra Nagast or The Book of Kings - best known work in this tradition

• Trickster Story - One of the popular form of traditional African folktale

Epic of Sundiata

composed in medieval Mali

Epic of Dinga

from Old Ghana Empire

Kebra Nagast or The Book of Kings

best known work in this tradition

Trickster Story

One of the popular form of traditional African folktale

Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford

published Ethiopia Unbound, the first African novel written in English

Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo

published The Girl Who Liked to Save, the first African play in English

Ngugi wa Thiong'o

wrote Black Hermit, the first east African drama

Chinua Achebe

published Things Fall Apart, which received significant worldwide critical acclaim

Ali A. Mazrui

Mention the 7 Conflicts as themes of African literature

- The clash between Africa's past and present

- Between tradition and modernity

- Between indigenous and foreign

- Between individualism and community

- Between socialism and capitalism

- Between development and self-reliance

- Between Africanity and humanity

Mention the 7 Conflicts as themes of African literature

Oral Literature

Call-and-responce

Prose

Types of African Literature

Oral Literature

griot (storyteller or historian)

Call-and-response

spontaneous verbal and nonverbal interaction between the speaker and the listener

prose

Mythological or historical, written or spoken

- Proverbs

- Epics

Chinua Achebe

He made a splash with the publication of his first novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958. Renowned as one of the seminal works of African literature, it has since sold more than 20 million copies and been translated into more than 50 languages. Achebe followed with novels such as No Longer at Ease (1960), Arrow of God (1964) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987), and served as a faculty member at renowned universities in the U.S. and Nigeria. He died on March 21, 2013, at age 82, in Boston, Massachusetts.

patriarch of the African Novel"

In 2007, he received the Man Booker International Prize for his contributions to world literature

Things Fall Apart

Famous work of Chinua Achebe