THE AFRICAN

LITERATURE
(BY AFRICANS IN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES)
The body of traditional oral and
written literatures in Afro-Asiatic
and African languages together
with works .
As George Joseph notes in his chapter on 
African Literature in Understanding
Contemporary Africa, whereas European
views of literature stressed a separation of art
and content, African awareness is inclusive
and "literature" can also simply mean an
artistic use of words for the sake of art alone.
Traditionally, Africans do not radically separate
art from teaching.
• WHAT ARE 4 DIFFERENT TYPES OF AFRICAN
LITERATURE?
WELL LET’S FIND OUT
• These are 4 different types of
African Literature:
*Oral Literature
*Precolonial African
Literature
*Colonial African Literature
*Postcolonial Literature.
 Oral literature (or orature, the term
coined by Ugandan scholar Pio
Zirimu) may be in prose or verse.
The prose is often mythological or
historical and often includes tales of
the trickster character.
Storytellers in Africa sometimes use 
call-and-response techniques to tell their
stories.

Oral literature, including stories, dramas,
riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs,
and other expressions, is frequently
employed to educate and entertain
children.
 Pre-colonial African Literature concerned
itself with the fight for independence.
Writings that were churned out during this
period (before the 1960s) addressed
colonialism and occupation and its tone
was vitriolic.
 WHAT IS PRE-COLONIAL
LITERATURE?

Pre-colonial literature deals with oral
 

traditions. These are in the form of epic poems,

oral geneaologies, rhymes, riddles, wise
sayings, folk tales, etc. The themes of these
works was often spiritual or cosmological, or
they were moral tales.
Colonial literature refers to a work written during a
period of time when one country was actively
participating in the colonization or imperialistic
exploitation of another geographic area.

Literature in colonial Africa is

synonymous with writing about life shaped
by the colonial experience of direct rule
and domination by imperialist powers.
Postcolonial literature the consensus
in the field is that post-colonial (with a
hyphen) signifies a period that comes
chronologically after colonialism.
Postcolonial on the other hand, signals
the persisting impact of colonization
across time periods and geographical
regions.
While the hyphen implies that history
 

unfolds in neatly distinguishable stages

from pre- to post-colonial, omitting the
hyphen creates a comparative
framework by which to understand the
varieties of local resistance to colonial
impact.
 • THE CONCEPT OF AFRICAN
LITERATURE
African literature is defined as literary
works of the African continent. African
literature consists of a body of work
written in many languages and
encompasses various genres, ranging
from oral literature to literature written in
colonial languages.
• THE THEME OF AFRICAN LITERATURE

The clash between past and present,

tradition and modernity, self and
community, as well as politics and
development.