ENG.117

• Africa is the 2nd largest continent next to Asia and covers more than ONE-FIFTH of all the earth's surface
• Islam is the dominant religion of northern Africa
• Literary rates for men are higher than women in Africa
• Urban education is higher than rural education in Africa
• Before colonialism, Africans would tell their stories orally and through performance
• After colonialism, the African writers started to write in European languages such as English, Portuguese, and French
• In the period between 1881 and 1914, known as the 'Scramble for Africa', numerous European powers took control of most of Africa
• Literary genres that flourished

  • Poetry
  • Drama
  • Novel
  • Short stories
• Literature represents the breadth and depth of universal experiences of man
• Negritude was coined by Aime Cesaire from the pejorative French word "negre"
• 3 Fathers of Negritude


  • Aime Cesaire - Poet, playwright, & politician from Martinique
  • Leon Gontran Damas - French Guyanese poet & National Assembly member
  • Leopold Sedar Senghor - First president of independent Senegal
• Themes of written African literature

  • Freedom and independence
  • Questions of identity and liberation
  • Cultural identity
  • Colonialism
  • Post-colonialism
  • Social issues
  • Personal experiences
• Written literature in the 1950's and 1960's have been described as "Literature of Testimony"
• African authors who produced literature in the European languages have been described as "Literatures of Revolt"
• African oral literature was performative, with themes usually mythological and historical, and performed using mimicry, gestures, and expressions
• African oral literature was versatile and communal
• The first 'slave narratives' of the 18th and 19th centuries included The interesting life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) and Frederick Douglass's autobiography: Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
• Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the life of a slave girl (1861) was an important slave narrative
• Intersectionality emphasizes the interconnectedness of social categories such as race, gender, and class
• Periods of African literature

  • Pre Colonial (15th-19th centuries, including the Atlantic slave trade)
  • Colonial (end of World War I to African independence)
  • Post Colonial (themes of modernity and tradition, past and present, individuality and collectivism)
• The Jim Crow laws enforced racial segregation, prompting works like Booker T. Washington's "Up from Slavery" (1901) and W.E.B. Du Bois's "Souls of Black Folk" (1903)
• By 1910 and 1920, Black writers were being more and more recognised in fiction and poetry
• Major African writers


  • Leopold Sedar Senghor
  • Okot P' Bitek
  • Wole Soyinka
  • Chinua Achebe
  • Barbara Kimenye
  • Bessie Head
  • Ousmane Sembene
  • Nadine Gordimer
• Without the Nile River, all of Egypt would be desert
• Divisions of Egypt


  • Upper Egypt in the south
  • Lower Egypt in the north
  • Red and black divisions
• Islam is the religion of Egypt, and oil and gas are major exports
• King Narmer established Egypt's national identity
• The Great Pyramid at Giza and the Sphinx are iconic landmarks of Ancient Egypt
• The Great Pyramid, also known as the Pyramid of Khufu, is a famous landmark
• The Sphinx, attributed to pharaoh Khafra, is a mysterious half-human, half-lion statue
• Nefertiti, Akhenaten's queen, remains a mysterious figure in history
• Cleopatra, daughter of Ptolemy XII, married Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony
• Hieroglyphs


  Main characteristics of Egyptian literature lies in the use of symbols and figures; most recurrent themes was mythology
• Tools used in Egyptian literature

  • Chisels - to craved on the stones
  • Calamus -a cut reed similar to a paintbrush
  • Scribes - dedicated writers
• Upper social classes in ancient Egypt could read and had access to texts
• Main periods of ancient Egyptian literature


  • Old Kingdom - "Age of Pyramids" or "Age of the Pyramid builders"
  • Middle Kingdom - Classic age of Egyptian literature (The Period of Reunification)
  • New Kingdom - increased concern over dangers after death
  • Late Kingdom - written in demotic; the value of adaptability, cultural exchange
• Hieroglyphics


  Derived from Greek words "hieros" (sacred) and "glypho" (to carve); Ideograms represented objects or concepts; Phonetic signs denoted sounds; Determinatives provided context to accompanying words
• The Rosetta Stone, found by French soldiers during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt, contained text in three scripts: hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek
• Types of Egyptian literature

  • Religious literature (Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, Book of Dead)
  • Tales (The Tale of Sinuhe, The Story of the Doomed Prince, Misadventures of Wen-Amond)
  • Wisdom Literature (Maxims and Instructions)
  • Love Lyrics
• Well known Egyptian authors

  • Alaa Al Aswany
  • Ahdaf Soueif
  • Yusuf Idris
  • Nawal El Saadawi
  • Miral al-Tahawy
  • Taha Hussein
  • Tawfiq al-Hakim
  • Naguib Mahfouz