FRACIAN

TREALIRTUE
 AFRICAN
LITERATURE
BY: GROUP 4
AFRICAN LITERATURE
• African literature is the body of
traditional oral and written literatures
in Afro-Asiatic and African languages
together with works written by
Africans in European languages.
WHAT IS ORAL AND
WRITTEN LITERATURE?
• Oral literature includes ballads,
folklore, jokes and. fables that are
passed down by word of mouth.
• Written literature includes poetry and
novels, with subsections for fiction,
prose, myth, short story and novel.
AFRICAN LITERATURE
• 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.
 AFRICAN
LITERATURE’S
ORAL
TRADITIONS
1. ETH AUTNRE
OF
ROTSYTLGNIEL
1. THE NATURE
OF
STORYTELLING
1. THE NATURE OF
STORYTELLING
• Storytellingis 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.
1. THE NATURE OF
STORYTELLING
• The storyteller speaks, time collapses,
and the members of the audience are in
the presence of history.
• 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.
1. THE NATURE OF
STORYTELLING
• 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.
2. EHT EDIRLD
2. THE RIDDLE
2. THE RIDDLE
• A deliberately enigmatic or ambiguous
question requiring a thoughtful and often witty
answer.
• The riddle is a form of guessing game that has
been a part of the folklore of most cultures
from ancient times.
• Western scholars generally recognize two
main kinds of riddle: the descriptive riddle and
the shrewd or witty question.
3. HTE RYLCI
3. THE LYRIC
3. THE LYRIC
• Theimages in African lyric interact in
dynamic fashion, establishing
metaphorical relationships within the
poem, and so it is that riddling is the
motor of the lyric.
4. HTE ORVBRPE
4. THE PROVERB
4. THE PROVERB
• The African proverb seems initially to
be a hackneyed expression, a trite
leftover repeated until it loses all
force. But proverb is also
performance, it is also metaphor, and
it is in its performance and
metaphorical aspects that it achieves
its power.
4. THE PROVERB
• The proverb establishes ties with its
metaphorical equivalent in the real life
of the members of the audience or with
the wisdom of the past.
• The words of the proverb are a riddle
waiting to happen. And when it
happens, the African proverb ceases to
be a grouping of tired words.
5. HTE LTAE
5. THE TALE
5. THE TALE
• Theriddle, lyric, and proverb are the
materials that are at the dynamic
centre of the tale.
5. THE TALE
• These diverse images are brought together
during a storytelling performance by their
rhythmic organization. Because the
fantasy images have the capacity to elicit
strong emotional reactions from members
of the audience, these emotions are the
raw material that is woven into the image
organization by the patterning.
6. CHRIOE
TPYOER
6. HEROIC
POETRY
6. HEROIC POETRY
• A narrative verse that is elevated in
mood and uses a dignified, dramatic,
and formal style to describe the deeds
of aristocratic warriors and rulers.
6. HEROIC POETRY
• It
is in heroic poetry, or panegyric,
that lyric and image come into their
most obvious union. As in the tale and
as in the lyric, riddle, and proverb, the
essence of panegyric is metaphor,
although the metaphorical
connections are sometimes somewhat
obscure.
7. ETH PCIE
7. THE EPIC
• A long narrative poem recounting
heroic deeds, although the term has
also been loosely used to describe
novels
7. THE EPIC
• In the epic can be found the merging
of various frequently unrelated tales,
the metaphorical apparatus, the
controlling mechanism found in the
riddle and lyric, the proverb, and
heroic poetry to form a larger
narrative.
7. THE EPIC
• The epic, like the heroic poem,
contains historical references such as
place-names and events; in the heroic
poem these are not greatly developed.