AFRICAN

LITERATURE
• AFRICAN LITERATURE- the body of traditional oral and written literatures in
Afro-Asiatic and African language together with works written by Africans in
European languages. Traditional written literature. Which is limited to a
smaller geographic area is than is oral literature, is most characteristics of
those sub- Saharan culture 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 Ge’ez ( Ethiopic ) and Amharic, two of the language 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 .
• Folk literature, also called folklore or oral tradition, the lore
(traditional knowledge and beliefs) of cultures having no written
language. I is transmitted by word of mouth consists, as does written
literature, of both prose and verse narratives, poems and songs,
myths, dramas, ritual, proverbs, riddles, and the like. Nearly all known
peoples, now or in the past have produced it.
ORAL LITERATURE
Oral literature ( or orature ) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often
mythological or historical and can include tales of the trickster
character. Storyteller in Africa sometimes use call-and-response
techniques to tell their stories. Poetry, often sung, includes: narrative
epic, occupational verse, ritual verse, praise poems of rulers and other
prominent people. Praise singers, bards sometimes known as” griots “,
tell their stories with music. Also recited, often sung, are love songs,
works song, children song, along with epigram, proverbs and riddles.
• Colonial African literature
The African work best know in the west from the periods of colonization and the
slave trade are primarily slave narratives such as Olaudah Equiano’s The
interesting narrative of the life of Olaudah Equaino (1789)

In the colonial period, Africans exposed to western language began to write in

Those tongues. In 1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford (also know as ekra-
agiman) of the gold coast ( now Ghana ) published what is probably the first
African novel written in English , Ethiopia unbound: studies in race
emancipation. Although the work moves between fiction and political advocacy,
its publication and positive reviews in the western press mark a watershed
moment in African literature.