Lesson 4: African Literature

• Africa - is a continent often depicted as exotic, filled with tribes, savannahs, jungles, and safaris.
• One of its earliest civilizations is that of Egypt, which was established more than 5,000 years ago. This civilization sprang in the lands beside the Nile River.
• As it had different ethnic groups, it also has various religious systems, many of which are polytheistic with a supreme god and other lesser gods and deities.
• Ancient Africans also believed in and prayed to ancestral spirits.
• With the onset of foreign trade and cultural exchanges, Christianity was brought to Ethiopia in the early fourth century.
• While Islam came to northern Africa in the early seventh century.
• Polyrhythmic – African music featured complex, interlocking, and contrasting rhythms that are achieved by striking bells, clapping hands, beating drums, and stomping feet.
• Call and response – This refers to the act of having a chorus repeat a lead singer’s words in response.
• These dances are often witnessed in important occasions like:

  1. events in the agricultural year
  2. rituals that mark rites of passage
  3. ceremonies of secret societies
  4. healing the sick
• In Western Africa, the griot is a learned storyteller, poet, performer, and historian. Griots have been handing down their oral culture for over 4,000 years.
• Griots accompany their stories with music
• Features of Traditional African Storytelling

  • It is a communal experience.
  • Repetition
  • Storytelling fulfills purposes beyond being just a form of entertainment.
  • Tone is a vital part of the storytelling.
• African prose narratives often center on people, animals, histories, etc.
• Egypt – This country had a vibrant and strong empire that centered on a polytheistic society.
• Old Ghana – It is a powerful and affluent kingdom that derives its riches from the trade of salt and gold.
• Old Mali – It overtook Old Ghana for supremacy.
• Songhai – This is the last of the great kingdoms.
• Timbuktu – This is a city that was part of both the Old Mali and Songhai empires. It served as a major trading center and was home to libraries with extensive collections of books.
• Fasa and Aksum – These are African territories with notable oral literature.
• Dilemma tale - This is a form of moral tale that does not have a definite ending and invites the audience to share judgment.
• Chain tale or cumulative tale – It is a formulaic story, which means it has a pattern. In this kind of story, the characters’ dialogue or action repeats, and the plot line tends to be simple.
• Literary Device

  • parallelism
  • personification
  • metaphor
  • alliteration
  • rhyme
• Epithet - This is often used to describe particular traits or qualities of a character.
• Apostrophe - This is a literary device used to address a character who is not present or a nonliving object. It is often represented with an exclamation point.
• Omniscient point of view - This is a narration method wherein the narrator is aware of all the characters’ thoughts and feelings.
• Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford - a Ghanaian, is the author of one of the first published African novels written in English. His novel is titled Ethiopia Unbound.
• Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo - a South African, wrote the first published English language African play titled The Girl Who Killed to Save. He was also the founder of the Bantu Dramatic Society, the establishment of which led to the creation of many plays.
• Ngugi wa Thiong’o - a Kenyan writer, wrote the first fulllength East African play titled Black Hermit.
• Chinua Achebe - a Nigerian, wrote the novel Things Fall Apart, which is regarded as one of the most influential African novels and has received worldwide critical acclaim.
• African poetry, just like its counterpart, prose, is generally oral. Often, it is sung and performed.
• African Poetry

  • Afro-Asiatic languages
  • Click languages
  • Niger-Congo languages
  • Sudanic languages
  • Austronesian languages
• Leopold Sedar Senghor - was a president of Senegal who published the first anthology of French language poetry.
• Wole Soyinka - is a Nigerian poet who was wellknown for his utilization of English in writing poetry. In 1986, he became a Nobel Prize laureate for literature
• Nadine Gordimer - is the second African writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991.
• John Pepper Clark - a Nigerian literary critic. His famous collection of poems was called A Decade of Tongues, which reflected on postcolonial life in Africa.