African literature Study Guide

📖 Core Concepts African literature = oral literature (orature) + written works in African & Afro‑Asiatic languages. Orature – term coined by Pio Zirimu for spoken/performative literature (storytelling, praise singing, riddles, etc.). Griots – praise singers/bards who combine music with narrative. Manuscript hubs – Timbuktu (≈300 000 Arabic/Fula/Songhai manuscripts) and historic universities (Fes, Cairo). Literary periods – Pre‑colonial, Colonial, Post‑colonial; each with distinct themes, languages, and purposes. Key thematic shifts – slave narratives → liberation & négritude → clash of tradition vs. modernity. --- 📌 Must Remember Earliest surviving works: Garima Gospels (c. 500 AD, Ge’ez) & Kebra Negast (14th c.). First English African novel: Ethiopia Unbound (1911, Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford). First English‑language African play: The Girl Who Killed to Save (1935, H.I.E. Dhlomo). Breakthrough novel: Things Fall Apart (1958, Chinua Achebe). Nobel laureates (post‑independence): Wole Soyinka (1986); others of African birth: Camus (1957), Mahfouz (1988), Gordimer (1991), Coetzee (2003), Lessing (2007), Gurnah (2021). Major awards: Booker Prize – Ben Okri’s The Famished Road (1991); Caine Prize (est. 2000) for short stories. Female milestone: Daughters of Africa anthology (1992, Margaret Busby). --- 🔄 Key Processes Oral performance Storyteller → call‑and‑response → audience participation. Griots weave music, poetry, and historical praise. Manuscript production (Timbuktu) Scribe writes on parchment → copies circulated among scholars → preservation of astronomy, law, poetry, etc. Literary evolution Pre‑colonial oral & manuscript → Colonial written forms (slave narratives, early novels/plays) → Post‑colonial diversification (multiple languages, feminist voices, global awards). --- 🔍 Key Comparisons Orature vs. Written literature – oral: performed, mutable, communal; written: fixed, portable, often tied to religious or scholarly institutions. Pre‑colonial vs. Colonial vs. Post‑colonial themes – Pre‑colonial: myth, genealogy, religious instruction. Colonial: slave narratives, emancipation, early nationalist sentiment. Post‑colonial: tradition vs. modernity, identity, politics, gender. English vs. French vs. Indigenous publication – English & French dominate early colonial output; post‑independence sees rise of works in Hausa, Swahili, etc. --- ⚠️ Common Misunderstandings “All African literature is oral.” → Written manuscripts and novels have existed since at least the 5th c. AD. “African writers only publish in colonial languages.” → Post‑colonial era includes substantial indigenous‑language output (e.g., Hausa, Swahili). “Camus represents African literature.” → Though Algerian‑born, Camus wrote within French literary tradition, not the African post‑colonial canon. --- 🧠 Mental Models / Intuition Timeline‑Layer Model: Picture three concentric rings – innermost (Pre‑colonial oral/manuscript), middle (Colonial written, slave narratives), outermost (Post‑colonial multilingual, award‑winning). Theme‑Cue Shortcut: Slave narrative → Colonial, English/French, emancipation focus. Trickster animal → Oral tradition, moral teaching. Négritude & liberation → Late‑colonial/early post‑colonial. --- 🚩 Exceptions & Edge Cases Albert Camus – African‑born Nobel laureate but not part of African post‑independence literary movement. Female representation – While today strong, early colonial works were overwhelmingly male‑dominated; the shift occurs mainly after 1960s independence. --- 📍 When to Use Which Identify period → Look at language (Arabic/Ge’ez = pre‑colonial; English/French = colonial/post‑colonial) and theme (slave narrative vs. liberation vs. modernity clash). Choose analytical lens → Oral analysis for trickster tales, call‑and‑response, griot performance. Post‑colonial theory for works after 1960 dealing with identity, diaspora, gender. Reference award → Booker‑prize works = high‑visibility post‑colonial novels; Caine Prize = short‑story focus. --- 👀 Patterns to Recognize Clash of opposites – tradition ↔ modernity, self ↔ community, politics ↔ development. Recurring motifs – trickster animals, praise poems, proverbs, riddles. Language shift – early texts in Arabic/Ge’ez → later dominance of European languages → resurgence of indigenous tongues. --- 🗂️ Exam Traps Distractor: “The first African novel in English was published after independence.” – Wrong; Ethiopia Unbound (1911) predates independence. Distractor: “All Nobel laureates from Africa write in indigenous languages.” – Wrong; many (e.g., Camus, Mahfouz) wrote in French/Arabic. Distractor: “Orature is limited to storytelling.” – Wrong; includes praise singing, riddles, epics, work songs, etc. Distractor: “Post‑colonial literature ignores pre‑colonial themes.” – Wrong; many post‑colonial works explicitly juxtapose pre‑colonial myths with modern issues.