WITHIN
AFRICA
54
The oral tradition of African literature still survives and endures—poetry, praise-songs, chants, myths, legends, sagas, epics, and folktales—in various forms: stories passed down by elders, praises of kings and queens recited by griots, proverbs told from generation to generation, liturgies played on talking drums. These literary traditions pervade harvest festivals and funerals of notables and royalty. Many of these “traditional” forms have transformed: oral tradition, or orature, has become written and digital, present in books and interactive websites in African curricula at schools and universities all over the continent, integrated into popular music and contemporary fiction and poetry. Despite problems of access and uneven development in most countries, the African arts and humanities have an indelible role in education and entertainment within Africa and all over the world.
Much of the Anglophone world first became acquainted with African literature after the publication of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), a classic novel widely assigned since the 1980s to high school and college students in the U.S. Within Africa will focus on the diverse and impressive literary “boom” since the Fifties. The West African region has a particularly rich history of literature—poetry, fiction, drama, essay—in colonial languages (English, French, Portuguese), especially since Independence (Ghana, 1957; Guinea, 1958; much of the continent by 1960). African writers and intellectuals, from the generation of Wole Soyinka to the generation of Achille Mbembe, have made indelible contributions to world literature and to contemporary criticism and theory—contributions lauded around the world.
Recommended links
Recommended Book
The Black Cloth ( English translation available),
a collection of African folktales
Bernard Binlin Dadie
African Literature: From the Griot to the Novelist
Literature has been integral to African life for millennia. As is well known, one of the earliest forms of writing comes from Africa, from the ancient Egyptians, but for centuries much of African literature has been preserved through oral tradition: myths, folktales, poetry, epics, and proverbs (a form central to traditional African philosophy). On a continent with more than 1,500 languages, each culture maintains the myths and stories that have been passed from generation to generation. Griots and griottes (feminine), or oral historians and storytellers, have been and remain keepers of this tradition; while the term “griot” is widely used in Francophone West and Central Africa and beyond, it is of uncertain origin. Each ethnic group has terms that epitomize this role in society, signifying historian, praise-singer, musician, or royal linguist—for example, okyeame (Akan), gewel (Wolof), or djéli (Mandé). In the nineteenth century, several African writing systems were created, such as those of the Bamun (Cameroon), Vaï (Liberia), or Nsibidi writing of the Efik/Ibibio (Nigeria); in the twentieth century N’ko writing gained widespread use for Mandé speakers (the Maninka language of Mandé, Mandingo, Bambara, Dioula, etc.).