African Literature - Oral Tradition, Written Literature, Women's Writing, Children Of The Postcolony, Debates And Critical Engagements
heritage arab historical triple
African literature is best understood within the context of Ali Mazrui's categorization of African historical experience as a "triple heritage": Africa as a space produced by endogenous historical traditions, Arab/Islamic influences, and Western Judeo-Christian influences. This triple heritage has produced a literature characterized by a tripodal identity, based on its relationship to each element. Africa's indigenous heritage is of its rich oral traditions. The Arab/Islamic heritage is associated with the written literatures of North Africa and parts of East and West Africa. The Arabic and Western aspects of Africa's triple heritage reflect the continent's experience with the historical trauma of conquest, evidenced by such events as the Arab invasion of North Africa and West Africa, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and colonialism. The Western/Judeo-Christian heritage has shaped the literature written in English, French, and Portuguese.
Additional Topics
Oral tradition comprises the specialized verbal art forms—proverbs, riddles, chants, lyric poetry, tales, myths, legends, and epics—through which African societies have ensured cultural continuity. It is the repository of a community's core values, philosophies, mysteries, rituals, and, most importantly, memory. It survives by virtue of transmission from one generation to anot…
The twentieth century witnessed the blossoming of a generation of North African writers whose craft combined centuries of Arab narratological conventions and Western influences. These writers either write in Arabic and have influential translations of their works in English and French, or they write directly in the two European languages. Of those whose works attained international recognition in …
African women arrived on the literary scene much later than their male counterparts. Cultural impediments to the education of women, coupled with the Western sexism of the colonial system, kept girls out of the earliest missionary schools. Flora Nwapa's (1931–1993) Efuru (1967) was Anglophone Africa's first female novel. Other Anglophone female novelists include Buchi Emecheta…
A new generation of writers attained international recognition beginning in the mid-1980s. The most important factor that distinguishes them from earlier generations is that most of them, but for a few born in the late 1950s, were born after 1960, the year that African nations began to achieve independence. The political reality of these writers is that of the failed African postcolony, something …
A rich critical tradition developed early around modern African writing. Francophone Africa had journals such as Présence Africaine (African presence), Peuples noirs, peuples africains (Black peoples, African peoples), Abbia, and L'Afrique littéraire et artistique (Literary and artistic Africa). Anglophone Africa had a wider array of early journals: Black Orpheus, The Conch, The H…
Almeida, Irène Assiba d'. Francophone African Women Writers: Destroying the Emptiness of Silence. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994. Beier, Ulli, ed. Introduction to African Literature: An Anthology of Critical Writing from Black Orpheus. London: Longmans, 1967. Cazenave, Odile. Femmes rebelles: naissance d'un nouveau roman africain au féminin. Paris: L'…
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