African Literature

• Africa


  The Cradle of Humankind - Origin of human
• Oral tradition


  • Written literature
  • Through fasil
  • English, Portuguese, and French
• Oral literature


  • Documenting folk heroes
  • Didactic
  • Genres: myths, stories, riddles, proverbs, and dramas
• Griots


  Praise singers (story tellers)
• Africa partners with Europe and Asia


  Ancient times, and 15th century
• Slave trade compounded in the 19th century by European countries for political and economic edge


  1400s
• Depiction of a slave's suffering

  1789
• Poetry


  • Used to convey the horrors of slavery
• Poems


  • "On Liberty and Slavery" - by George Moses Horton
  • born into slavery
• 19th century

  • Desire to be freed from oppression
• Newspaper came

  1800s
• Negritude movement


  Founded by African students in Paris in the 1930s
• Narratives


  • Thomas Mofolo's Chaka
• Spirit of nationalism

  After World War |||
• Contemporary African literature


  • After colonial experience, Sovereign government installed
  • Ngugi wa Thiong'o imprisoned due to subversive messages against the Kenyan administration
  • VY Madimbe's "Before the Birth of the Moon" (1989) - Against corruption in society