African Literature Flashcards
marked the time when
sculpture, music, metalwork, textiles, and oral literature flourished.
Africa’s golden age
is the tradition of African oral literature which includes praise poems,
love poems, tales, ritual dramas, and moral instructions in the form of proverbs
and fables. It also includes epics and poems and narratives.
Orature
the keepers of oral literature in West Africa, may be a professional
storyteller, singer, or entertainer and were skilled at creating and transmitting the
many forms of African oral literature. Bards, storytellers, town criers, and oral
historians also preserved and continued the oral tradition.
Griots
served foremost as memory aids for
griots and other storytellers. Repetition also creates rhythm, builds suspense,
and adds emphasis to parts of the poem or narrative. Repeated lines or refrains
often mark places where an audience can join in the oral performance.
Repetition and parallel structure
in which lines or phrases are repeated with
slight variations, sometimes by changing a single word.
Repeat-and-vary-technique
tones in which syllables are spoken determine the
meanings of words like many Asian languages.
Tonal assonance
includes spirited audience participation in
which the leader calls out a line or phrase and the audience responds with an
answering line or phrase becoming performers themselves.
Call-and-reponse format
do not tell a story but instead, like songs, create a vivid, expressive
testament to a speaker’s thoughts or emotional state. Love lyrics were an
influence of the New Kingdom and were written to be sung with the
accompaniment of a harp or a set of reed pipes.
Lyric poems
were offered to the sun god Aten.
Hymns of praise songs
the longest of several New Kingdom hymns. This hymn was found on the
wall of a tomb built for a royal scribe named Ay and his wife. In was intended to
assure their safety in the afterlife.
The great hymn to aten
much more than quaint old sayings. Instead, they represent
a poetic form that uses few words but achieves great depth of meaning and they
function as the essence of people’s values and knowledge.
African proverbs
an important kind of African moral tale intended for
listeners to discuss and debate. It is an open-ended story that concludes with a
question the asks the audience to choose form among several alternatives. By
encouraging animated discussion, a dilemma tale invites its audience to think
about right and wrong behavior and how to best live within society.
Dilemma or Enigma Tale
comes from Ashanti, whose traditional homeland is the dense and
hilly forest beyond the city of Kumasi in south-central Ghana which was
colonized by the British in the mid-19th century. But the Ashanti, protected in
their geographical stronghold, were able to maintain their ancient culture. The
tale exemplifies common occupations of the Ashanti such as farming, fishing, and
weaving. It combines such realistic elements with fantasy elements like talking
objects and animals.
Ashanti tale
have been handed down in the oral tradition from ancient times. The
stories represent a wide and colorful variety that embodies the African people’s
most cherished religious and social beliefs. The tales are used to entertain, to
teach, and to explain. Nature and the close bond that Africans share with the
natural world are emphasized. The
Folk Tales
stories include creation stories and stories explaining the origin of death.
Origin
is an enormously popular type. The best known African trickster
figure is Anansi the Spider, both the hero and villain from the West African origin
to the Caribbean and other parts of the Western Hemisphere as a result of the
slave trade.
Trickster Tale
attempt to teach a lesson.
Moral stories
primarily intended to amuse.
Humorous stories
of vanished heroes – partly human, partly superhuman, who embody the
highest values of a society – carry with them a culture’s history, values, and
traditions. The African literary traditions boasts of several oral epic
Epics
from the Mandingo peoples of West Africa is the best-preserved and
the best-known African epic which is a blend of fact and legend. Sundiata
Keita, the story’s hero really existed as a powerful leader who in 1235 defeated
the Sosso nation of western Africa and reestablished the Mandingo Empire of
Old Mali. Supernatural powers are attributed to Sundiata and he is involved in
a mighty conflict between good and evil. It was first recorded in Guinea in the
1950s and was told by the griot Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate.
Sundiata
