AFRICA

1. The Rise of Africa’s Great Civilization. Between 751 and 664 B.C. the
kingdom of Kush at the southern end of the Nile River gained strength and
prominence succeeding the New Kingdom of Egyptian civilization. Smaller
civilizations around the edges of the Sahara also existed among them the Fasa of
the northern Sudan, whose deeds are recalled by the Soninka oral epic, The
Daust.
 Aksum (3 century A.D.), a rich kingdom in eastern Africa arose in what is
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now Ethiopia. It served as the center of a trade route and developed its own
writing system.
 The Kingdom of Old Ghana (A.D. 300) the first of great civilizations in
western Africa succeeded by the empires of Old Mali and Songhai
 The legendary city of Timbuktu was a center of trade and culture in both
the Mali and Songhai empires.
· Africa’s Golden Age (between A.D. 300 and A.D. 1600) marked the time when
sculpture, music, metalwork, textiles, and oral literature flourished.
· Foreign influences came in the 4 century. The Roman Empire had
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proclaimed Christianity as its state religion and taken control of the entire
northern coast of Africa including Egypt.
· Mid-1900s marked the independence and rebirth of traditional cultures
written in African languages.

2. Literary Forms.
a) Orature is the tradition of African oral literature which includes praise poems,
love poems, tales, ritual dramas, and moral instructions in the form of proverbs
and fables.

b) Griots, the keepers of oral literature in West Africa, may be a

professional storyteller, singer, or entertainer and were skilled at creating and
transmitting the many forms of African oral literature.
c) Features of African oral literature:
· repetition and parallel structure – served foremost as memory aids for griots
and other storytellers. Repetition also creates rhythm, builds suspense, and
adds emphasis to parts of the poem or narrative.
· repeat-and-vary technique – in which lines or phrases are repeated with slight
variations, sometimes by changing a single word.
· tonal assonance – the tones in which syllables are spoken determine the
meanings of words like many Asian languages.
· call-and-response format - includes spirited audience participation in which
the leader calls out a line or phrase and the audience responds with an
answering line or phrase becoming performers themselves.
d) Lyric Poems do not tell a story but instead, like songs, create a vivid,
expressive testament to a speaker’s thoughts or emotional state. Love lyrics were
an influence of the New Kingdom and were written to be sung with the
accompaniment of a harp or a set of reed pipes.
Example: The sorrow of Kodio by Baule
e) Hymns of Praise Songs were offered to the sun god Aten. The Great Hymn to
Aten is the longest of several New Kingdom hymns. This hymn was found on the
wall of a tomb built for a royal scribe named Ay and his wife. In was intended to
assure their safety in the afterlife.

f) African Proverbs are much more than quaint old sayings. Instead, they
represent a poetic form that uses few words but achieves great depth of meaning
and they function as the essence of people’s values and knowledge.

Kenya. Gutire muthenya ukiaga ta ungi. (No day dawns like another.)
South Africa. Akundlovu yasindwa umboko wayo.
(No elephant ever found its trunk too heavy.)
Kikuyu. Mbaara ti ucuru. (War is not porridge.)

g) Dilemma or Enigma Tale is an important kind of African moral tale intended

for listeners to discuss and debate.
h) Ashanti Tale comes from Ashanti; whose traditional homeland is the dense and hilly
forest beyond the city of Kumasi in south-central Ghana which was colonized by the
British in the mid-19 century.
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i) Folk Tales have been handed down in the oral tradition from ancient times. The
stories represent a wide and colorful variety that embodies the African people’s most
cherished religious and social beliefs.
j) Origin stories include creation stories and stories explaining the origin of death.

k) Trickster Tale is an enormously popular type. The best-known African trickster figure
is Anansi the Spider, both the hero and villain from the West African origin to the
Caribbean and other parts of the Western Hemisphere as a result of the slave trade.

l) Moral Stories attempt to teach a lesson.

m) Humorous Stories is primarily intended to amuse.

n) Epics of vanished heroes – partly human, partly superhuman, who embody the highest
values of a society – carry with them a culture’s history, values, and traditions.
· The Dausi from the Soninke
· Monzon and the King of Kore from the Bambara of western Africa
· The epic of Askia the Great, medieval ruler of the Songhai empire in western Africa
· The epic of the Zulu Empire of southern Africa
· Sundiata from the Mandingo peoples of West Africa is the best-preserved and the best-
known African epic which is a blend of fact and legend.
3. Negritude, which means literally ‘blackness,’ is the literary movement of the 1930s –
1950s that began among French-speaking African and Caribbean writers living in Paris
as a protest against French colonial rule and the policy of assimilation.

4. African Poetry is more eloquent in its expression of Negritude since it is the poets who
first articulated their thoughts and feelings about the inhumanity suffered by their own
people.
· Paris in the Snow swings between assimilation of French, European culture or
negritude, intensified by the poet’s catholic piety.
· Totem by Leopold Senghor shows the eternal linkage of the living with the dead.
· Letters to Martha by Dennis Brutus is the poet’s most famous collection that speaks
of the humiliation, the despondency, the indignity of prison life.

· Train Journey by Dennis Brutus reflects the poet’s social commitment, as he reacts
to the poverty around him amidst material progress especially and acutely felt by the
innocent victims, the children

· Telephone Conversation by Wole Soyinka is the poet’s most anthologized poem that
reflects Negritude.

· Africa by David Diop is a poem that achieves its impact by a series of climactic
sentences and rhetorical questions
· Song of Lawino by Okot P’Bitek is a sequence of poems about the clash between
African and Western values and is regarded as the first important poem in “English to
emerge from Eastern Africa. Lawino’s song is a plea for the Ugandans to look back to
traditional village life and recapture African values.

5. Novels.
· The Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono points out the disillusionment of Toundi, a boy
who leaves his parents maltreatment to enlist his services as an acolyte to a foreign
missionary. The novel is developed in the form of a recit, the French style of a diary-
like confessional work.

· Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe depict a vivid picture of Africa before the
colonization by the British. The title is an epigraph from Yeats’ The Second Coming:
‘things fall apart/ the center cannot hold/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world.’ Cultural values are woven around the plot to mark its authenticity: polygamy
since the character is Muslim; tribal law is held supreme by the gwugwu, respected
elders in the community; a man’s social status is determined by the people’s esteem and
by possession of fields of yams and physical prowess; community life is shown in
drinking sprees, funeral wakes, and sports festivals.

· No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe is a sequel to Things Fall Apart and the title
of which is alluded to Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi: ‘We returned to our places, these
 kingdoms,/ But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation.’ The returning hero fails
to cope with disgrace and social pressure. Okwonko’s son has to live up to the
expectations of the Umuofians, after winning a scholarship in London, where he reads
literature, not law as is expected of him, he has to dress up, he must have a car, he has
to maintain his social standing, and he should not marry an Ozu, an outcast. In the
end, the tragic hero succumgs to temptation, he, too receives bribes, and therefore is ‘no
longer at ease.’

· The Poor Christ of Bombay by Mongo Beti begins en medias res and exposes
the inhumanity of colonialism.
· The River Between by James Ngugi show the clash of traditional values and
contemporary ethics and mores.

· Heirs to the Past by Driss Chraili is an allegorical, parable-like novel. After 16 years of
absence, the anti-hero Driss Ferdi returns to Morocco for his father’s funeral.

· A Few Days and Few Nights by Mbella Sonne Dipoko deals withracial prejudice. In
the novel originally written in French, a Cameroonian scholar studying in France is torn
between the love of a Swedish girl and a Parisienne show father owns a business
establishment in Africa.

· The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka is about a group of young intellectuals who

function as artists in their talks with one another as they try to place themselves in the
context of the world about them.

6. Major Writers.
· Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906) is a poet and statesman who was cofounder of the
Negritude movement in African art and literatureHe became president of Senegal in
1960. His works include: Songs of Shadow, Black Offerings, Major Elegies, Poetical
Work. He became Negritude’s foremost spokesman and edited an anthology of French-
language poetry by black African that became a seminal text of the Negritude movement.

· Okot P’Bitek (1930 – 1982) was born in Uganda during the British domination and
was embodied in a contrast of cultures. Among his works are: Song of Lawino, Song
of Ocol, African Religions and Western Scholarship, Religion of the Central Luo,
Horn of My Love.

· Wole Soyinka (1934) is a Nigerian playwright, poet, novelis, and critic who was the
first black African to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. Among his
works are: plays – A Dance of the Forests, The Lion and the Jewel, The Trials of
Brother Jero; novels – The Interpreters, Season of Anomy; poems – Idanre and
Other Poems, Poems from Prison, A Shuttle in the Crypt, Mandela’s Earth and
Other Poems.
· Chinua Achebe (1930) is a prominent Igbo novelist acclaimed for his unsentimental
depictions of the social and psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of
Western customs and values upon traditional African society. His works
include, Things Fall Apart, Arrow of God, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People,
Anthills of Savanah.

· Nadine Gordimer (1923) is a South African novelist and short story writer whose
major theme was exile and alienation. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in
1991. Among her works are: The Soft Voice of the Serpent, Burger’s Daughter,
July’s People, A Sport of Nature, My Son’s Story.

· Bessie Head (1937 –1986) described the contradictions and shortcomings of pre- and
postcolonial African society in morally didactic novels and stories. She suffered rejection
and alienation from an early age being born of an illegal union between her white mother
and black father. Among her works are: When Rain Clouds Gather, A Question of
Power, The Collector of Treasures, Serowe.

· Barbara Kimenye (1940) wrote twelve books on children’s stories known as

the Moses series which are now a standard reading fare for African school
children. Among her works are: KalasandaRevisited, The Smugglers, The Money
Game.

· Ousmane Sembene (1923) is a writer and filmmaker from Senegal. His works
include, O My Country, My Beautiful People, God’s Bits of Wood, The Storm.