Introduction to African Literature
Introduction to African Literature
In the dictionary ‘Le Petit Larousse 2003’ literature is defined as a field embracing written and oral works to which an aesthetic aim is acknowledged. This definition upholds the assertion that African literature has ever existed in the oral form. African forms of literature are interesting not only as far as anthropological perspectives are concerned, but also from an aesthetic view point. Africa is endowed with epics, folktales and praise poems that have gone through the centuries. It can never be too strongly emphasised or emphasised often enough that African poetry does not commence with the advent of colonial education in Africa; nor does African poetry, properly speaking, begin with the training of native speakers in the use of the European tongues. As in other parts of the world, poetry in Africa, its use and enjoyment by ordinary members of the community, is as old as organised society itself: the African languages, through the ‘oral literatures’, are repositories of some of the finest verse in epic form as well as in the shorter lyric which has survived to our own day under very testing conditions. A great deal of this oral poetry, whether it is the praise-poems of South Africa, the sacred songs of the Masai, the Odu corpus of the Yoruba, or the religious chants of the Igbos, or the funeral dirges of the Akan, has fertilised much of contemporary African verse in the European languages: even when it has not palpably done so it has sometimes created a healthy tension between traditional African modes and the acquired western techniques. Given that the media for communicating inside and outside Africa are the languages brought by the colonial powers, those literary forms can only be spread around the world when translated into French, English, Spanish or Portuguese. Since translating those literary works into English alters much the social context of their production, writers rarely tend to do so.
Ethiopia Unbound
In the dictionary ‘Le Petit Larousse 2003’ literature is defined as a field embracing written and oral works to which an aesthetic aim is acknowledged. This definition upholds the assertion that African literature has ever existed in the oral form. African forms of literature are interesting not only as far as anthropological perspectives are concerned, but also from an aesthetic view point. Africa is endowed with epics, folktales and praise poems that have gone through the centuries. It can never be too strongly emphasised or emphasised often enough that African poetry does not commence with the advent of colonial education in Africa; nor does African poetry, properly speaking, begin with the training of native speakers in the use of the European tongues. As in other parts of the world, poetry in Africa, its use and enjoyment by ordinary members of the community, is as old as organised society itself: the African languages, through the ‘oral literatures’, are repositories of some of the finest verse in epic form as well as in the shorter lyric which has survived to our own day under very testing conditions. A great deal of this oral poetry, whether it is the praise-poems of South Africa, the sacred songs of the Masai, the Odu corpus of the Yoruba, or the religious chants of the Igbos, or the funeral dirges of the Akan, has fertilised much of contemporary African verse in the European languages: even when it has not palpably done so it has sometimes created a healthy tension between traditional African modes and the acquired western techniques. Given that the media for communicating inside and outside Africa are the languages brought by the colonial powers, those literary forms can only be spread around the world when translated into French, English, Spanish or Portuguese. Since translating those literary works into English alters much the social context of their production, writers rarely tend to do so.
Ethiopia Unbound