african literature definition
What is a serious factor in African literature?
Eme and Mbagwu (2011) argue: "A serious factor…is undeveloped and underdeveloped African languages. Writers cannot write in languages that have not been developed to have a written form or languages that have not been developed to the level at which they could be used in literature (p. ... ...
Should African literature be written in European languages?
There is the Eurocentric temptation to see modern African literature written in these European languages as an extension of European literature. However, after modern imperialism, language alone cannot be the sole definer of a people's literature. Defining African literature, Abiola Irele writes:
When did South African literature come out?
Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward. The literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a separate article, South African literature. See also African theatre.
What is modern African literature?
Modern African literature is written in indigenous African languages and in European languages used in Africa. Written African literature is very new compared to the indige nous oral tradition of literature which has been there and is still very much alive.
Overview
African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic area than is oral literature, is most characteristic of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean. In particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what is now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. There are also works written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is the one part of Africa where Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered traditional. Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward. The literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a separate article, South African literature. See also African theatre. The relationship between oral and written traditions and in particular between oral and modern written literatures is one of great complexity and not a matter of simple evolution. Modern African literatures were born in the educational systems imposed by colonialism, with models drawn from Europe rather than existing African traditions. But the African oral traditions exerted their own influence on these literatures. britannica.com
The nature of storytelling
The storyteller speaks, time collapses, and the members of the audience are in the presence of history. It is a time of masks. Reality, the present, is here, but with explosive emotional images giving it a context. This is the storyteller’s art: to mask the past, making it mysterious, seemingly inaccessible. But it is inaccessible only to one’s present intellect; it is always available to one’s heart and soul, one’s emotions. The storyteller combines the audience’s present waking state and its past condition of semiconsciousness, and so the audience walks again in history, joining its forebears. And history, always more than an academic subject, becomes for the audience a collapsing of time. History becomes the audience’s memory and a means of reliving of an indeterminate and deeply obscure past. Storytelling is a sensory union of image and idea, a process of re-creating the past in terms of the present; the storyteller uses realistic images to describe the present and fantasy images to evoke and embody the substance of a culture’s experience of the past. These ancient fantasy images are the culture’s heritage and the storyteller’s bounty: they contain the emotional history of the culture, its most deeply felt yearnings and fears, and they therefore have the capacity to elicit strong emotional responses from members of audiences. During a performance, these envelop contemporary images—the most unstable parts of the oral tradition, because they are by their nature always in a state of flux—and thereby visit the past on the present. Britannica Quiz Word Nerd Quiz It is the task of the storyteller to forge the fantasy images of the past into masks of the realistic images of the present, enabling the performer to pitch the present to the past, to visualize the present within a context of—and therefore in terms of—the past. Flowing through this potent emotional grid is a variety of ideas that have the look of antiquity and ancestral sanction. Story occurs under the mesmerizing influence of performance—the body of the performer, the music of her voice, the complex relationship between her and her audience. It is a world unto itself, whole, with its own set of laws. Images that are unlike are juxtaposed, and then the storyteller reveals—to the delight and instruction of the members of the audience—the linkages between them that render them homologous. In this way the past and the present are blended; ideas are thereby generated, forming a conception of the present. Performance gives the images their context and ensures the audience a ritual experience that bridges past and present and shapes contemporary life. Storytelling is alive, ever in transition, never hardened in time. Stories are not meant to be temporally frozen; they are always responding to contemporary realities, but in a timeless fashion. Storytelling is therefore not a memorized art. The necessity for this continual transformation of the story has to do with the regular fusing of fantasy and images of the real, contemporary world. Performers take images from the present and wed them to the past, and in that way the past regularly shapes an audience’s experience of the present. Storytellers reveal connections between humans—within the world, within a society, within a family—emphasizing an interdependence and the disaster that occurs when obligations to one’s fellows are forsaken. The artist makes the linkages, the storyteller forges the bonds, tying past and present, joining humans to their gods, to their leaders, to their families, to those they love, to their deepest fears and hopes, and to the essential core of their societies and beliefs. britannica.com
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Source-Materials to African Literature
Source-Materials to African Literature*. John CONTEH-MORGAN**. The publication of any new or updated dictionary of African creative writing is always. |
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African Literature (Francophone)
ness in defining African literature along the Anglophone-Francophone linguistic di- vide reminiscent of colonial history Francophone African literature is |
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Modern African Literature and - Cultural Identity - Tanure Ojaide
Defining African literature Abiola Irele writes: The term 'Africa' appears to of definition involves as well a consideration of aesthetic modes in. |
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English and the African Writer
But there was something which we tried to do and failed. -that was to define "African Literature" satisfactorily. Was it literature produced in Africa or about |
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Chinua Achebe : His Ideas on African Literature
a look at the African literature of today reveals a preoccupation with the events of the colonial era definition of criteria for African Literature » :. |
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Routes: Language and the Identity of African Literature
isolation and fully formed but from the interaction between cultures. In the words of Amselle (i998: 33) |
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Self-Writing and Existential Alienation in African Literature: Achebes
to any clearly worked out definition of Tragedy such that “African Modes of Self-. Writing” is in the end the excoriation of Africanist scholarship for |
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The Aesthetics of African Literature: A Problem of Relevance
efforts to evolve an aesthetics for African literature have been largely misleading because of the inadequacy of the definition or description of African |
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African Literature & the Universities
took part in the conferences. It in- volved in the first place |
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Lilyan Kesteloot and the History of African Literature
European critics of African literature one of the most defining fig- ures of the literary life of the black world for the past forty years. Moreover |
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African Literature - CORE
literature is also often categorized by language of expression ( anglophone, francophone, Hausa, |
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African Literature Doesnt Exist
Cité 27 fois — late great Chinua Achebe, writing in 1965, concludes, “Any attempt to define African literature in terms |
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African Literary Aesthetics and the English Metaphysical Empire
A PDF |
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Global African Literature: Strategies of Address and Cultural
bling Achebe's legacy as the father of African literature 2 The story of Things Fall Apart's and ahistorical—a definition that corresponds exactly to the definition that they have |
