Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
20 - African literature and the colonial factor
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
Summary
Modern African literature was produced in the crucible of colonialism. What this means, among other things, is that the men and women who founded the tradition of what we now call modern African writing, both in European and indigenous languages, were, without exception, products of the institutions that colonialism had introduced and developed in the continent, especially in the period beginning with the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 and decolonization in the late 1950s and early 1960s. African literature had, of course, been produced outside the institutions of colonialism: the existence of oral literature in all African languages and precolonial writing in Arabic, Amharic, Swahili, and other African languages is ample evidence of a thriving literary tradition in precolonial Africa. But what is now considered to be the heart of literary scholarship on the continent could not have acquired its current identity or function if the traumatic encounter between Africa and Europe had not taken place. Not only were the founders of modern African literature colonial subjects, but colonialism was also to be the most important and enduring theme in their works. From the eighteenth century onwards, the colonial situation shaped what it meant to be an African writer, shaped the language of African writing, and overdetermined the culture of letters in Africa.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature , pp. 379 - 397Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
References
. 1964. Arrow of God. London: Heinemann.
. 1973. “The Role of the Writer in a New Nation.” In African Writers on African Writing. Ed. . London: Heinemann:.Google Scholar
1985. “The Social Repercussions of Colonial Rule: the New Social Structures.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
. 1994. ’Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti’s History of Egypt [Ajaib al-Athar fi ’l-tarajim wa-’l-akhbar]. Ed. and . Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. edn. London: Verso.
. [1955] 1970. The Sociology of Black Africa: Social Dynamics in Central Africa. Trans. . New York: Praeger.
. 1985a. “Africa and the Colonial Challenge.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
. 1985b. “Colonialism in Africa: Its Impact and Significance.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
1985. “Methods and Institutions of European domination.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
, ed. 1958. Prose of the Victorian Period. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
. 1972. Discourse on Colonialism. Trans. . New York, Monthly Review Press.
and . 1992. Ethnography and the Historical Imagination. Boulder, CO: Westview.
“Introduction: Colonialism and Culture.” In Colonialism and Culture. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press:.
. [1963] 1968. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. . New York: Grove.
. 1985. “Editor’s Introduction: Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes.” Critical Inquiry 12.1:.Google Scholar
. 1990. “The Nature of Things: Arrested Decolonization and Critical Theory.” Research in African Literature 21. 1:.Google Scholar
. 1997. Shakespeare in Africa. Trenton: Africa World.
. 1968. The Origins of Modern African Thought: Its Development in West Africa during the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. London: Faber and Faber.
. [1938] 1965. Facing Mount Kenya. New York: Random House.
1980. “Carey Francis at the A. H. S., Kikuyu – 1940–62.” In Biographical Essays on Imperialism and Collaboration in Colonial Kenya. Ed. . Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau:.Google Scholar
. 1979. Ideologies of Liberation in Black Africa 1856–1970: Documents on Modern Political Thought from Colonial Times to the Present. London: Rex Collings.
1993. “The Development of Modern Literature Since 1935.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VIII: Africa Since 1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
1967. King’s College, Budo: The First Sixty Years. Nairobi: Oxford University Press.
. 1985. Blank Darkness: Africanist Discourse in French. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
. 1956. Le pauvre Christ de Bomba. Paris: Laffont.
. 1957. Mission terminée. Paris: Buchet-Chastel.
. 1965. The River Between. London: Heinemann.
. 1952. The Missionary Factor in East Africa. London: Longman.
. 1985. “Religion in Africa during the Colonial era.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . London: Heinemann:.Google Scholar
. 1956a. Une vie de boy. Paris: Julliard.
. 1956b. Le vieux nègre et la médaille. Paris: Julliard.
. 1975. Boy!. Trans. . London: Heinemann.
1985. “African Initiative and Resistance in the Face of Partition and Conquest.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
1983. “The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa.” In The Invention of Tradition. Ed. and . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press:.Google Scholar
, and , eds. 1997. The Oral-Written Interface. Special issue of Research in African Literatures 28.1.Google Scholar
. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.
1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage.
1941. Lovedale, South Africa: The Story of a Century 1841–1941. Lovedale: Lovedale Press.
. 1990. Ngugi wa Thiong’o: The Making of a Rebel. London: Hans Zell.
. 1985. “The Arts in Africa During the Period of Colonial Rule.” In The UNESCO General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa under Colonial Domination 1880–1935. Ed. . Berkeley: University of California Press:.Google Scholar
. 1983. The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twentieth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1972. British Protestant Missions. London: Longman.
. 1979. The Literature and Thought of Modern Africa. 2nd English edn. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press.
. 1984. Sol Plaatje: A Biography. Johannesburg: Ravan.
. 1991. Those Magical Years: The Making of Nigerian Literature at Ibadan, 1948–1966. Washington, DC: Three Continents Press.
- 2
- Cited by