European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan AfricaAlbert S. Gérard John Benjamins Publishing, 1 janv. 1986 - 1288 pages The first major comparative study of African writing in western languages, European-language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by Albert S. Gérard, falls into four wide-ranging sections: an overview of early contacts and colonial developments Under Western Eyes ; chapters on Black Consciousness manifest in the debates over Panafricanism and Negritude; a group of essays on mental decolonization expressed in Black Power texts at the time of independence struggles; and finally Comparative Vistas, sketching directions that future comparative study might explore. An introductory essay stresses the millennia of writing in Africa, side by side with a richly eloquent and artistic set of vernacular oral traditions; written and oral traditions have become interwoven in adaptations of imported forms and linguistic innovations that challenge traditional high literary norms. Gérard uses the mathematical concept of fuzzy sets to explain why the focus on Black Africa has led him to set aside for future analysis the literatures produced in North Africa, which fall under the influence of Muslim civilization, as well as the diasporic literatures of the New World. Over sixty scholars from twenty-two countries contribute specialized studies of creative writing by leading authors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as Achebe, Mphahlele, Ngugi, Senghor, Soyinka, and Tutuola. Critical analyses are organized primarily around regions, reflecting different colonial languages imposed through schools and other social institutions. Some authors trace the adaptation of western genres, others identify syncretism with folktales or myths. The volumes are attentive to the heterogeneity of national literatures addressed to polyethnic and multilingual populations, and they note the instrumental politics of language in newly independent states. A closing chapter, Tasks Ahead, identifies areas for future scholars to explore. |
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Page 94
... fact that in the English literature of West Africa, historical research emerged simultaneously with political speculation. Indeed, the very first book in English to have come from the Gold Coast was the work of another historian of the ...
... fact that in the English literature of West Africa, historical research emerged simultaneously with political speculation. Indeed, the very first book in English to have come from the Gold Coast was the work of another historian of the ...
Page 95
... fact remains that the first two generations of anglophone West African intellectuals were a unique phenomenon on the Black continent. It is not too much to say that they had elaborated all the basic tenets of negritude long before the ...
... fact remains that the first two generations of anglophone West African intellectuals were a unique phenomenon on the Black continent. It is not too much to say that they had elaborated all the basic tenets of negritude long before the ...
Page 100
... fact, the indigenes of Liberia have remained poor, under-privileged and uneducated. A 1956 census showed that 70 per cent of Liberians over the age of 5 could not read or write English,41 and there are about 1 1/2 million people in the ...
... fact, the indigenes of Liberia have remained poor, under-privileged and uneducated. A 1956 census showed that 70 per cent of Liberians over the age of 5 could not read or write English,41 and there are about 1 1/2 million people in the ...
Page 109
... fact remains that he was, in however modest a fashion, the first writer in the Gold Coast to promote African values in English prose narrative. Considerable progress in the mastery of Western literary techniques was soon to be evidenced ...
... fact remains that he was, in however modest a fashion, the first writer in the Gold Coast to promote African values in English prose narrative. Considerable progress in the mastery of Western literary techniques was soon to be evidenced ...
Page 115
... fact remains that the specificity of Ghanaian literature, and to a lesser extent of all of West African literature in English, owes much to the Gold Coast period and its precocious development. Both the comparatively rapid rise of that ...
... fact remains that the specificity of Ghanaian literature, and to a lesser extent of all of West African literature in English, owes much to the Gold Coast period and its precocious development. Both the comparatively rapid rise of that ...
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