African Literature

I

Introduction

African Literature, works of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, published in written form in various media (books, journals, manuscripts, inscriptions on public monuments), by writers of direct African descent from countries south of the Sahara.

African oral traditions of storytelling mean that the pioneering works of African fiction have been largely unavailable in print. Vast numbers of various peoples across sub-Saharan Africa mainly relied on the oral relaying of stories and styles of storytelling from one generation of a family to the next. This preserved a repertoire of tales peculiar to their culture which was also a record of African history. As such, African literature has traditionally blurred the boundaries of fiction and non-fiction as perceived in the West. It continues to confound these categories in other aspects of style.

In traditional society, the business of telling stories was often professionalized. Male children learnt the art from their elders and matured when they acquired an established repertoire of stories and styles. Examples of this are in the traditions of the griot (bard) found in West Africa and the kàsàlà (epic poem or lament) in the east.

Stories were for both children and adults, and usually featured a stock character, such as Anansi (the spider) in the tales of the Asante people of modern-day Ghana. Such traditions travelled with the advent of transatlantic slavery: Anansi became the Caribbean Ananncy, and a figure from popular Liberian Krio folklore became the model for America’s Brer Rabbit. Tales served both to entertain and to exemplify a moral point.

The only written works in circulation before the arrival of colonial settlers and missionaries were religious texts such as the Koran, the impact of which spread with the Islamic conquest of the northernmost parts of West and East Africa, and the Bible. Manuscripts were both rare and mainly handwritten or hand-printed. It was not until the 1890s, with the arrival of Western printing technology and the consolidation of European settlements in the coastal parts of East and West Africa, that written literature established itself. Most of the fiction produced both then and now is in the European languages, the principal of these being English, French, and Portuguese.

II

Pre-19th-Century Literature

Early literature across Africa was meant for ceremonial and ritual use and was either commemorative in function, or a record of histories, peoples, and events. Much of it derived from or was inspired by devotional texts: the Bible of the early Coptic Christians and the Koran.

Makeda, Queen of Sheba, Ethiopia, wrote an account in the 10th century bc of her experience of travelling to see Solomon, King of Israel, and of the effect this visit had on her life. The story, circulated in manuscript and oral form for centuries, was translated into English and published by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge under the title The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek (1922). Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt (15th century bc) wrote poetry in honour of her earthly and spiritual fathers which appears on the sides of obelisks she erected at the temple of Amon in Karnak.

The form and content of early written literature of West Africa were very much influenced by certain Islamic writings which originated further north on the continent. Histories such as the well-known Kano Chronicle were originally written in Hausa. Copies were highly prized property of the sarkis (rulers) of northern Nigeria. However, this epic only came to be known of centuries later, in 1883-1893, when the chronicle was transcribed by Sir Richmond Palmer. The original versions of the text were destroyed by Fulani invaders. The same is true of the famed Sundiata, the epic poem recounting the founding of the 14th-century Mali Empire. The earliest existing accurate written version of this only dates from a transcription of the words of the griot Djeli Mamoudou Kouyaté, published in Paris in 1913.

The earliest West African written poetry was mainly religious, and the best of it reflected a familiarity with pre-Islamic poetry as well as North African religious writings. Perhaps the most famous West African religious poet was Abdullah ibn Muhammed Fudi, who lived in the late 1700s and early 1800s, Emir of Gwandu and brother of the Muslim reformer Shehu Uthman.

Swahili poetry was largely derived from Arabic poetry. The earliest known original Swahili work, the epic poem Utendi wa Tambuka (Story of Tambuka), is dated 1728. Swahili writers of epic verse borrowed from the romantic traditions surrounding the Prophet Muhammad and then freely elaborated on them to meet the tastes of their listeners and readers. By the 19th century, Swahili poetry had gone beyond Arabic themes and taken up such indigenous Bantu forms as ritual songs. The greatest religious poem, Utendi wa Inkishafi (Soul’s Awakening), written by Sayyid Abdallah bin Nasir, illustrates the vanity of earthly life through the account of the fall of the citystate of Pate. The oral tradition of Liyongo, a 13th-century contender for the throne of Shagga, is preserved in the epic poem Utendi wa Liyongo Fumo (Epic of Liyongo Fumo), written by Muhammad bin Abubakar in 1913.

Historiography was widespread in the 18th century, although little of it survives. The famed scholar and statesman Sultan Muhammadu Bello wrote Infaq al-Maysur (paraphrased and trans. 1929), an account of the lives and customs of the Yoruba people, who live in what is now southern Nigeria.

With the establishment of regular contact between European settlers or traders and the indigenous peoples, writing began to emerge in the “metropolitan” languages. The acknowledged literature of this period consists mainly of the writings of slaves and, for the first time, its first place of publication is outside Africa. Because of its links to the western coast slave trade, literature of this period is also largely West African in origin.

One of the best-known authors of this era is Phyllis Wheatley, captured from Senegal as a seven-year-old around 1760. She wrote lyrical accounts of the experience of slavery, such as the deeply disturbing “On Being Brought from Africa to America”, as well as occasional verse. Her style and language were highly imitative of the vogue in English poetry of the time: Neo-Classical, with marked recourse to the Christian scriptures for tone and ethic. Wheatley was the first black woman ever to publish a book of verse in the United States. Her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) went through 11 editions before 1816. Another notable figure in African literature of this period is Olaudah Equiano, captured as a child from the Kingdom of Benin, in present-day Nigeria. Equiano later became a free man, and published his autobiography in Britain in 1789 under the pseudonym of Gustavus Vassa.

III

The Early 20th Century

The middle of the 19th century marked the beginnings of a consolidation of Western imperial interests in sub-Saharan Africa, with administrative settlements turning into fully fledged colonies. With this came European culture and education, and the rise of a Westernized middle class which began to write.

The literature produced was either for private amusement or limited circulation, much of it first appearing in magazines, and consists largely of verse and short fiction. Although this literature was never written with the intention of reaching a mass audience, its impact was considerable in that it provided models for later authors of writing about social and cultural preoccupations of Africans. It also established certain conventions of structure and style (large elements of autobiography, chronological narrative, and the use of pidgin English).

Much fictional writing continued to imitate Western styles considered chic at the time, using classical verse forms, reworking history and common legend, idealizing ancient African history, or featuring domestic and comic situations. Another major influence on writing at this time is European Romanticism. However, this era also marked the beginning of formal opposition to colonial rule and the pioneering of a culture of political writing.

Joseph E. Casely-Hayford was a journalist, barrister, and nationalist born in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) who did much to establish the new brand of non-fiction. Much of his work was in the fields of politics, sociology, and the law. His first published work, Gold Coast Native Institutions (1903), is a study of mechanisms of government and social order. His wife Adelaide was born in Sierra Leone of mixed Ghanaian and English ancestry. She began her literary career late in life, producing memoirs written in the form of essays (reprinted in Memoirs and Poems, 1983).

The earliest writing of this era from East Africa consists of works of autobiography and anthropology. The Ugandan Ham Mukasa Uganda’s Katikiro in England (1904; trans. 1975) is an account of the visit of an official Ugandan representative to the coronation of Edward VII. It is remarkable in that it was first published in the original Luganda, marking the beginning of a strong East African tradition of writing in indigenous languages. The Kenyans Parmenas Mockerie and Jomo Kenyatta (later his country’s president) both wrote autobiographical works that commented on Gikuyu society and its impact on the newly arrived Europeans. Mockerie’s An African Speaks for His People was first published in London in 1934 and Kenyatta’s Facing Mount Kenya appeared in 1938.

An effective French policy of assimilation meant that French-speaking Africa was considerably slower to produce a home-grown literary tradition. The first writer of note to emerge was the Madagascan poet Jean-Joseph Rabéarivelo. His three collections La Coupe des Cendres (1924), Sylves (1927), and Volumes (1928) are marked by a strong influence of French late 19th-century Symbolists and Parnassians. The first imaginative prose by Africans in French began to emerge in this period, mainly from Senegal. The first novel to appear was Ahmadou Mapaté Diagne’s Les Trois Volontés de Malic (1920), a whimsical fairy tale. Ousmane Socé’s Karim (1935) and Mirages de Paris (1937) both dealt with the conflict between African mores and European alienation. Socé’s work however accepted Western cultural supremacy quite unquestioningly. In Benin, Felix Couchoro wrote L’Esclave (1929), which examines problems of cultural identity with great feeling.

Similarly, poets and novelists began to emerge in southern Africa. Mhudi (1930) by Solomon Plaatje was the first novel ever written by a black South African. It is a historical romance in English about the Zulu lieutenant Mzilikazi. Plaatje’s style incorporates praise songs, in the style of traditional Bantu oral literature. Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka, though written later, appeared in print first (1925), and is a historical tragedy based on the life of the 19th-century Zulu king and warlord. This period was nevertheless dominated by white writers, the best known of whom was Olive Schreiner. Her novel The Story of an African Farm (1883) depicts the brutality of the veld for the white farmers who tried to master it.

IV

Contemporary Literature

A

Independence and After: 1940-1970

This period marks a rapid expansion in African literature. The major influences on writing were a growing sense of dissatisfaction with colonial authority; the desire to articulate a specifically African aesthetic; and Marxist thought. Literature was characterized by a romantic view of rural life in Africa and optimism about the future. The establishment of publishing interests such as the British Heinemann African Writers Series and French L’Harmattan and Présence Africaine also allowed writers to disseminate their work more widely than ever before. With independence and new education systems in place, African writers also found a new and ready-made audience: young people hungry for and eager to study African writing.