African Literature

African literature, literary works of the African continent.
African
literature consists of a body of work in different languages and
various genres, ranging from oral literature to literature written in
colonial languages (French, Portuguese, and English).South
African literature
Oral literature, including stories, dramas, riddles, histories, myths,
songs, proverbs, and other expressions, is frequently employed to
educate and entertain children. Oral histories, myths, and
proverbs additionally serve to remind whole communities of their
ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and the precedents for their
customs and traditions. Essential to oral literature is a concern for
presentation and oratory. Folktale tellers use call-response
techniques. A griot (praise singer) will accompany a narrative with
music.
Some of the first African writings to gain attention in the West
were the poignant slave narratives, such as The Interesting
Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano or
Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), which described vividly the
horrors of slavery and the slave trade. As Africans became literate
in their own languages, they often reacted against colonial
repression in their writings. Others looked to their own past for
subjects. Thomas Mofolo, for example, wrote Chaka (tr. 1931),
about the famous Zulu military leader, in Susuto.
Since the early 19th cent. writers from western Africa have used
newspapers to air their views. Several founded newspapers that
served as vehicles for expressing nascent nationalist feelings.
French-speaking Africans in France, led by Lopold Senghor, were
active in the ngritude movement from the 1930s, along with
Lon Damas and Aim Csaire. French speakers from French
Guiana and Martinique. Their poetry not only denounced
colonialism, it proudly asserted the validity of the cultures that
the colonials had tried to crush.
After World War II, as Africans began demanding their

independence, more African writers were published. Such writers
as, in western Africa, Wole Soyinka
Chinua Achebe Ousmane Sembene Kofi Awooner, Agostinho Neto,
Tchicaya u tam'si, Camera Laye, Mongo Beti, Ben Okri, and
Ferdinand Oyono and, in eastern Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Okot
p'Bitek
and Jacques Rabmananjara produced poetry, short stories,
novels, essays, and plays. All were writing in European languages,
and often they shared the same themes: the clash between
indigenous and colonial cultures, condemnation of European
subjugation, pride in the African past, and hope for the continent's
independent future.
In South Africa, the horrors of apartheid have, until the present,
dominated the literature. Es'kia Mphahlele,Nadine Gordimer,
Bessie Head, Dennis Brutus, J. M. Coetzee, and Miriam Tlali,, all
reflect in varying degrees in their writings the experience of living
in a racially segregated society..Much of contemporary African
literature reveals disillusionment and dissent with current events.
For example, V. Y. Mudimbe in Before the Birth of the Moon (1989)
explores a doomed love affair played out within a society riddled
by deceit and corruption. The Zimbabwean novelist and poet
Chenjerai Hove (19562015), wrote vividly in English and his
native Shona of the hardships experienced during the struggle
against British colonial rule, and later of the hopes and
disappointments of life under the rule of Robert Mugabe. In Kenya
Ngugi wa Thiong'o was jailed shortly after he produced a play, in
Kikuyu, which was perceived as highly critical of the country's
government. Apparently, what seemed most offensive about the
drama was the use of songs to emphasize its messages.
The weaving of music into the Kenyan's play points out another
characteristic of African literature. Many writers incorporate other
arts into their work and often weave oral conventions into their
writing. p'Bitek structured Song of Iowino (1966) as an Acholi
poem; Achebe's characters pepper their speech with proverbs in
Things Fall Apart (1958). Others, such as Senegalese novelist
Ousmane Sembene, have moved into films to take their message
to people who cannot read.

African Literature

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African literature, literary works of the African continent.

After World War II, as Africans began demanding their

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