African literature is literature of or from Africa and includes oral literature (or "orature",

in the term coined by Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu). As George Joseph notes in his
chapter on African literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, whereas
European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African
awareness is inclusive. 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.
Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral
literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to
society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and
the communities it helps to build.
Oral literature
Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often mythological
or historical and can include tales of the trickster character. Storytellers in Africa
sometimes use call-and-response techniques to tell their stories. Poetry, often sung,
includes: narrative epic, occupational verse, ritual verse, praise poems of rulers and
other prominent people. Praise singers, bards sometimes known as "griots", tell their
stories with music. Also recited, often sung, are love songs, work songs, children's
songs, along with epigrams, proverbs and riddles. These oral traditions exist in many
languages including Fula, Swahili, Hausa, and Wolof.
In Algeria, oral poetry was an important part of Berber traditions when the majority
of the population was illiterate. These poems, called Isefra, were used for aspects of
both religious and secular life. The religious poems included devotions, prophetic
stories, and poems honouring saints. The secular poetry could be about celebrations
like births and weddings, or accounts of heroic warriors. As another example, in Mali,
oral literature or folktales continue to be broadcast on the radio in the native language
Booma. (Haring. L, 2011)
Precolonial literature
Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. In Ethiopia, there is a
substantial literature written in Ge'ez going back at least to the fourth century AD, the
best-known work in this tradition is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings." One popular
form of traditional African folktale is the "trickster" story, in which a small animal uses
its wits to survive encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters
include Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people of Ghana; Ijàpá, a tortoise
in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria; and Sungura, a hare found in central and East African
folklore. Other works in written form are abundant, namely in north Africa, the Sahel
regions of west Africa and on the Swahili coast. From Timbuktu alone, there are an
estimated 300,000 or more manuscripts tucked away in various libraries and private
collections, mostly written in Arabic but some in the native languages (namely Fula
and Songhai). Many were written at the famous University of Timbuktu. The material
covers a wide array of topics, including astronomy, poetry, law, history, faith, politics,
and philosophy. Swahili literature similarly, draws inspiration from Islamic teachings
but developed under indigenous circumstances. One of the most renowned and
earliest pieces of Swahili literature being Utendi wa Tambuka or "The Story of
Tambuka".
In Islamic times, North Africans such as Ibn Khaldun attained great distinction within
Arabic literature. Medieval north Africa boasted universities such as those of Fes and
Cairo, with copious amounts of literature to supplement them
Colonial African literature
The African works best known in the West from the periods of colonization and the
slave trade are primarily slave narratives, such as Olaudah Equiano's The Interesting
Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789). In the colonial period, Africans
exposed to Western languages began to write in those tongues. In 1911, Joseph
Ephraim Casely Hayford (also known as Ekra-Agiman) of the Gold Coast (now Ghana)
published what is probably the first African novel written in English, Ethiopia Unbound:
Studies in Race Emancipation. Although the work moves between fiction and political
advocacy, its publication and positive reviews in the Western press mark a watershed
moment in African literature.
During this period, African plays written in English began to emerge. Herbert Isaac
Ernest Dhlomo of South Africa published the first English-language African play, The
Girl Who Killed to Save: Nongqawuse the Liberator in 1935. In 1962, Ngũgĩ wa
Thiong'o of Kenya wrote the first East African drama, The Black Hermit, a cautionary
tale about "tribalism" (discrimination between African tribes). Among the first pieces
of African literature to receive significant worldwide critical acclaim was Things Fall
Apart, by Chinua Achebe. Published in 1958, late in the colonial era, Things Fall Apart
analyzed the effect of colonialism on traditional African society.
African literature in the late colonial period (between the end of World War I and
independence) increasingly showed themes of liberation, independence, and (among
Africans in French-controlled territories) négritude. One of the leaders of the négritude
movement, the poet and eventual President of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor,
published in 1948 the first anthology of French-language poetry written by Africans,
Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française (Anthology of
the New Black and Malagasy Poetry in the French Language), featuring a preface by
the French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre.
For many writers this emphasis was not restricted to their publishing. Many, indeed,
suffered deeply and directly, censured for casting aside his artistic responsibilities in
order to participate actively in warfare, Christopher Okigbo was killed in battle for
Biafra against the Nigerian movement of the 1960s' civil war. Mongane Wally Serote
was detained under South Africa's Terrorism Act No 83 of 1967 between 1969 and
1970, and subsequently released without ever having stood trial. In London in 1970,
his countryman Arthur Norje committed suicide. Malawi's Jack Mapanje was
incarcerated with neither charge nor trial because of an off-hand remark at a university
pub and in 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged by the Nigerian junta.
Postcolonial African literature
With liberation and increased literacy since most African nations gained their
independence in the 1950s and 1960s, African literature has grown dramatically in
quantity and in recognition, with numerous African works appearing in Western
academic curricula and on "best of" lists compiled at the end of the 20th century.
African writers in this period wrote both in Western languages (notably English,
French, and Portuguese) and in traditional African languages such as Hausa.
Ali A. Mazrui and others mention seven conflicts as themes: the clash between Africa's
past and present, between tradition and modernity, between indigenous and foreign,
between individualism and community, between socialism and capitalism, between
development and self-reliance and between Africanity and humanity. Other themes in
this period include social problems such as corruption, the economic disparities in
newly independent countries, and the rights and roles of women. Female writers are
today far better represented in published African literature than they were prior to
independence.
In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first post-independence African writer to win the
Nobel Prize in literature. Previously, Algerian-born Albert Camus had been awarded
the prize in 1957.
Contemporary developments
There are a lot of literary productions in Africa since the beginning of the current
decade (2010), even though readers do not always follow in large numbers. One can
also notice the appearance of certain writings that break with the academic style. In
addition, the shortage of literary critics can be explored on the continent nowadays.
Literary events seem to be very fashionable, including literary awards, some of which
can be distinguished by their original concepts. The case of the Grand Prix of Literary
Associations is quite illustrative. Brittle Paper, founded by Ainehi Edoro, has been
described as "Africa’s leading literary journal".
Rand Bishop’s book (African Literature, African Critics. Westport: Greenwood, 1988)
is a welcome addition to African theoretical and critical scholarship. In its Introduction,
it forays into the multifaceted controversies on the defining criteria of African
literature, on the tense battles raging between African and non-African critics. Bishop
outlines the former's claims to ownership of the literature and, sees, therefore, a
better, deeper, and unbiased evaluation of it, and the claims of Western critics, armed
with "universal" critical and theoretical tools, who see African literature as an academic
exercise, especially when it is written in their language.
Bishop is quite right in reiterating that African literary criticism is not a matter of
preestablished standards imposed on it, and that on the part of the critic a knowledge
of the history, sociology, and anthropology that inform the literature is important for
a thorough evaluation of it. Bishop catalogs various African and non-African views on
the issues of languages, nationality, geographical spread, subject matter, style nègre,
and African psychology without making any conclusive statements.
For instance, Bishop presents the vexed question, raised by Obi Wali, of Western
languages for African literature. Reactions and counter-reactions to this question are
legion. Bishop restates African critics' view that, ideally, African literature should be
written in African languages. African writers and critics themselves lay the problem of
language to rest by agreeing that African writers should, like Achebe in Things Fall
Apart, adopt African English, African French, and African Portugese; that is, European
languages should be domesticated to express the peculiarities of African sensibilities.
Bishop also addresses the issue of audience and highlights African critics' displeasure
at the domineering and paternalistic attitudes of Western publishing houses that
dictate to the African writer what to write and how to write it. African critics are of the
strong opinion that their literature should have blacks as their main audience. As far
as the phenomenon of African tradition is concerned, Bishop presents the differing
opinions: some rely on it; others either reject it or blend it with the modern.
Bishop goes on to discuss the tendency on the part of African critics to agree on the
need for the African writer to depict African reality in order to correct the erroneous
image that the colonial era had given Africa. But what is this reality or, in Bishop's
term, "realia"? Is it reality in the present, or reality in the past, or a mixture of both?
But, then, the dangers of a decadent naturalistic movement soon surface. Senghor
would prefer African surrealism to realism: a hankering after realia soon turns a work
of art into a documentary journalism, divesting it of imaginative explorations.
But African literature, as Bishop emphasizes, is inscribed in the ethos of militancy.
Jean-Paul Sartre's seminal essay, "Orphée Noir," reinforces the theoretical construct
of this emergent and belligerent written literature. The criterion of "engagement" is
unanimously applied to a creative production whose social message takes precedence
over medium or aesthetics. Art for art's sake, although aired by some obscure critics
and writers, is always frowned upon in African literary practice.
For the Francophones, the Negritude movement comes up with a theoretical
paradigm. Senghor is its most vocal exponent. Anglophone critics, particularly Ezekiel
Mphalele, disown and frown at the Negritude paradigm. Like any concept, it
compresses creative impulse by squeezing it into an ideologizing pigeonhole. Its
incessant call to an idyllic past, the Anglophones say, is as false as it is loud. But even
then, as Bishop ingeniously asks, is African literature and criticism not an aspect of
the Negritude movement?
From a forest of controversies and opinions by African and non-African critics and
writers, Bishop has been able to elicit strong paradigms of critical and theoretical
evaluation of African literature by Africans themselves, and therein lies the abiding
merit of his book.
REFERENCES

Rand Bishop . African Literature, African Critics. Westport: Greenwood, 1988

George, Joseph, "African Literature", in Gordon and Gordon, Understanding
Contemporary Africa (1996), ch. 14, p. 303.
Joseph (1996), p. 304.
African literature at info-please.
Gunner, E. and H. Scheub (2018), [https://www.britannica.com/art/African-
literature/Oral-traditions-and-the-written-word "African Literature". 'Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Inc.
Aoudjit, A. (2017). Algerian literature : A reader's guide and anthology
(Francophone cultures and literatures ; v. 66). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.
p. 77
Haring, L. (2011). Translating African Oral Literature in Global Contexts. The Global
South, 5(2), 7-20. doi:10.2979/globalsouth.5.2.7