The Contribution of Literature in Modern African Society
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The primary objective of the study is as follows
- To examine what African literature is all about
- To examine how African literature has evolved over the years
- To find out the different ways with which African has presented its literature
- To examine the contribution of literature in modern African society.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
INTRODUCTION
Our focus in this chapter is to critically examine relevant literatures that would assist in explaining the research problem and furthermore recognize the efforts of scholars who had previously contributed immensely to similar research. The chapter intends to deepen the understanding of the study and close the perceived gaps.
THE AFRICAN LITERATURE
African literature refers to the literature of the African peoples. The African concept includes oral literature, while European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is all inclusive. Literature can also imply an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. Without denying the important role of aesthetics in Africa, we should keep in mind that, 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 the society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build. One major problem of African fiction is categorization. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the African novel gained momentum at a time of social upheaval in Africa. There were intense nationalist activities challenging the whole idea and practice of colonialism in Africa. Yet the African intelligentsia, to borrow Emmanuel Ngara’s expression, that is, the new bourgeoisie or elite was a product of missionary education. The colonial powers had acquiesced to granting political, but not economic and cultural independence to its colonies. That led the new African social elite to engage in artistic form inherited from the West but inspired by local tradition. For example, in 1952 Amos Tutuola wrote The Palmwine Drinkard based on Yoruba mythology, using African folktale tradition as form. He was followed in 1953 by Camara Laye with L’Enfant noir (translated into English as The African Child and later in the American edition as The Dark Child), an episodic novel, which relied heavily on African oral tradition to vaunt the merits of the African past, tradition and civilization to a deaf world. In 1958 and from a historical perspective, Chinua Achebe published the novel Things Fall Apart, which set out to correct the ugly perception of Africans. Ngugi wa Thiong’o followed in 1964 with Weep Not Child. It was the year of Kenyan independence and the novelist was making an urgent call to Africans to embrace education and enterprise as a way of ending Western imperialism and Indian entrepreneurship in East Africa. If the genre of the novel came to dominate the literary scene, it was due in part to its ability to borrow from tradition, but more importantly, it was a means that the new intelligentsia, educated in a colonial context, could understand and use to herald African values outside and inside Africa. The impact of other genres was progressively overshadowed by that of novelists such as wa Thiong’o, Ousmane, Oyono, Armah, Beti, Laye, Achebe, to mention only a few. Often, novelists made oral tradition and legends their springboard. They began telling stories about self, the immediate community or village, the nation-state or the newly formed proletariat, but by and large they remained inaccessible and foreign to the great majority of the African people. In contrast, African novel seems to belong to the people rather than to the elite because its formal complexity and intimidating status, borrowed from Western hierarchies, have never been naturalized in Africa. With the voice of ordinary people, the novel claims to be the legitimate heir of the traditional legends through which griots chronicled community history. The African novel writer tells stories to entertain and educate people in a way they understand. Like the storyteller, the writer holds the audience spellbound by the very beauty of the narrative, giving pleasure and also teaching morals and beliefs of the community, race or nation. African Novel has much in common with African oral tradition, which has been described as ‘the African classical tradition’. African classical tradition then finds its renewal in the novel because in a familiar way this genre puts in the context of today a number of subjects relevant to traditional and modern African values. It shows how economic, political, religious and social situations relate to pre-colonial Africa, colonialism, neo-colonial independence, apartheid, indigenous and imported religions, etc.
CHAPTER THREE
HOW AFRICAN LITERATURE HAVE EVOLVED OVER THE YEARS
LITERATURE AND LINGUISTIC EVOLUTION
It is a known fact that Literature impacts on linguistic development. Chinua Achebe‟s transliteration of local Igbo expressions into English in a way that is peculiar, for instance, has taught the literary world a new linguistic phenomenon which soon became popular among and inspired Africa writers. This linguistic emergence issued from Achebe‟s realization that no foreign language can be used to clearly express or capture the thoughts of another society whose mother tongue is different. Achebe‟s successful transliteration in his novels enables readers to understand the thoughts expressed as they are rendered originally and also carries the reader along; despite the fact that arch – linguists and conservative Western Imperialist critics saw Achebe‟s work as an attempt to corrupt the “well established English language that had for many centuries impeccably fostered and provided leverage and direction to human thoughts and expression, as well as the moral and intellectual development“. (Woakes, 1981:). Wole Soyinka has also explored the technique of more or less; translation when he translated D. O. Fagunwa‟s The Forest of a Thousand Demons from Yoruba language (the original Language of the book) to English. Soyinka‟s intension was to enable non – Yoruba speakers enjoy the art of Fagunwa. In a general sense, the technique of translation (and in fact, transliteration) has provided a good leverage to African Literature to be read and African thoughts appreciated by all readers across the globe because some of these works have been translated into several foreign languages of the world. From this perspective, we need to recall that Chinua Achebe, who writes mostly African themes, has exported African culture to all nooks and corners of the earth where it is now read about with better understanding and interest.
CHAPTER FOUR
WAYS BY WHICH AFRICAN HAS PRESENTED ITS LITERATURE
BEGINNING OF THE NOVEL IN AFRICA ORALITY
Africans have a rich oral tradition. Oral renditions existed and still exist as one of the ways by which African value systems are transmitted into the upcoming members of a community. African belief systems, attitudes, modes of worship, traditional mores, communal expectations and cultural affinity are transmitted through oral traditional methods like storytelling and other forms of ritual recourse. There are incidences of orature in most written fictions in Africa and the early novels imbibed the oral traditional art in creating the authentic African fiction from the African sociological framework. 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 for rulers and other prominent people. Praise singers, bards sometimes known as “griots”, tell their stories with music.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
SUMMARY
In this study, our focus was to examine the contribution of literature in modern African society using the Yoruba folktale as a case study. The study specifically was aimed at highlighting what African literature is all about. examine how African literature has evolved over the years.find out the different ways with which African has presented its literature. And, examine the contribution of literature in modern African society.
CONCLUSION
Based on the finding of this study, the following conclusions were made:
- African literature is literature from Africa, either oral or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages.
- African literature,are literary works of the African continent
- African literature consists of a body of work in different languages and various genres,
- African present their literature through fable
- African present their literature through folktales
- Africans also present their literature through myth
RECOMMENDATION
- Million dollar prize awards should be instituted for literary works in African languages.
- Policies that could encourage writing African literature in African languages should be formulated and implemented by government of African countries.
- That African literature should create a new form of literary works which will be different from the westernized way of writing
REFERENCES
- (1958) Things Fall Apart (AWS) London Heinemann.
- Achebe, C. (1985) Anthills of Savanna (AWS) London: Heinemann. (1958) Things Fall Apart (AWS) London Heinemann.
- Achebe, Chinua. (1975). Morning Yet On Creation Day. London:Heinemann.
- Anaso, G. N. (2006) “Literature as Social Discourse: a Case Study of the Social and ideological Dimensions of Conflict in the Selected Novels of Chinua Achebe and Timothy M. Aluko”, an unpublished PhD Dissertation presented to the Department of English and Literary Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
- Bamgbose, A., ‘The English Language in Nigeria’, In Spencer, J. (ed.), English language in West Africa, 1970, 78.
- Carnie, Andrew, Syntax: A generative introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002.
- Caudwell, C., Illusion and reality: A study of the sources of poetry, London: Lawrence and Wishart Ltd, 1977.
