African literature

African literature, literary works of the African continent. African literature consists of a body of work in different
languages and various genres, ranging from oral literature to literature written in colonial languages (French,
Portuguese, and English).

Oral literature, including stories, dramas, riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and other expressions, is frequently
employed to educate and entertain children. Oral histories, myths, and proverbs additionally serve to remind whole
communities of their ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and the precedents for their customs and traditions. Essential
to oral literature is a concern for presentation and oratory. Folktale tellers use call-response techniques. A griot (praise
singer) will accompany a narrative with music.

Some of the first African writings to gain attention in the West were the poignant slave narratives, such as The
Interesting Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789), which
described vividly the horrors of slavery and the slave trade. As Africans became literate in their own languages, they
often reacted against colonial repression in their writings. Others looked to their own past for subjects. Thomas Mofolo,
for example, wrote Chaka (tr. 1931), about the famous Zulu military leader, in Susuto.

Since the early 19th cent. writers from western Africa have used newspapers to air their views. Several founded
newspapers that served as vehicles for expressing nascent nationalist feelings. French-speaking Africans in France, led by
Léopold Senghor , were active in the négritude movement from the 1930s, along with Léon Damas and Aimé Césaire ,
French speakers from French Guiana and Martinique. Their poetry not only denounced colonialism, it proudly asserted
the validity of the cultures that the colonials had tried to crush.

After World War II, as Africans began demanding their independence, more African writers were published. Such writers
as, in western Africa, Wole Soyinka , Chinua Achebe , Ousmane Sembene , Kofi Awooner, Agostinho Neto , Tchicaya u
tam'si, Camera Laye, Mongo Beti, Ben Okri, and Ferdinand Oyono and, in eastern Africa, Ngugi wa Thiong'o , Okot
p'Bitek , and Jacques Rabémananjara produced poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and plays. All were writing in
European languages, and often they shared the same themes: the clash between indigenous and colonial cultures,
condemnation of European subjugation, pride in the African past, and hope for the continent's independent future.

In South Africa, the horrors of apartheid have, until the present, dominated the literature. Es'kia Mphahlele , Nadine
Gordimer , Bessie Head , Dennis Brutus , J. M. Coetzee, and Miriam Tlali all reflect in varying degrees in their writings the
experience of living in a racially segregated society.

Much of contemporary African literature reveals disillusionment and dissent with current events. For example, V. Y.
Mudimbe in Before the Birth of the Moon (1989) explores a doomed love affair played out within a society riddled by
deceit and corruption. The Zimbabwean novelist and poet Chenjerai Hove (1956–2015), wrote vividly in English and his
native Shona of the hardships experienced during the struggle against British colonial rule, and later of the hopes and
disappointments of life under the rule of Robert Mugabe . In Kenya Ngugi wa Thiong'o was jailed shortly after he
produced a play, in Kikuyu, which was perceived as highly critical of the country's government. Apparently, what seemed
most offensive about the drama was the use of songs to emphasize its messages.

The weaving of music into the Kenyan's play points out another characteristic of African literature. Many writers
incorporate other arts into their work and often weave oral conventions into their writing. p'Bitek structured Song of
Iowino (1966) as an Acholi poem; Achebe's characters pepper their speech with proverbs in Things Fall Apart (1958).
Others, such as Senegalese novelist Ousmane Sembene, have moved into films to take their message to people who
cannot read.
The Literature of Asia
The library's very rich stocks of books, periodicals and The Indian stocks contain books, periodicals and newspapers
newspapers in Oriental languages are concentrated in the in the numerous languages of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri
Department of the Literature of Asian and African Countries, Lanka and Nepal. Most of the publications are in the areas of
totalling more than two million items. The best represented fiction and philology, with complete sets of works by great
language is Chinese with almost 50,000 publications. These Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and other writers. The
embrace the complete corpus of Chinese classical literature, a library possesses almost the entire oeuvre of Premchand, a
very broad range of works by modern writers, as well as major figure in Hindi literature. The Sanskrit section is
books on history, art, linguistics and medicine. There are valuable and varied, embracing copies of the Vedas,
quite a number of rare, unique publications: a complete Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana and other ancient
encyclopaedia of Chinese culture — the 1,360-volume Tu shu Indian classics, as well as the first printed books in Indian
chi ch'eng (18th century), two large "universal library" series languages.
known as Ssu pu ts'ung k'an and Ssu pu pei yao, a celebrated
The Arabic stocks contain printed material from the Arabic-
history of the Ch'ing dynasty in some 900 volumes, and more.
speaking world. Mainly they are books on philosophy, history
The 3-volume History of China. Peking. 1998 and art, works of mediaeval Arabic literature, and also
publications by modern and contemporary authors. There are
The Chinese stocks include the exceptionally valuable
some unique sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions
sinological collection of the eminent St Petersburg scholar
here, including the Vita Timuri (1636) by Ahmad ibn
V.V. Petrov which the library acquired in 1987. It consists
Muhammad ibn Arabshah. Notable too is The Book of Songs
chiefly of Chinese publications covering a broad timespan and
(1868) a 20-volume collection of verse by Abu'l-Faradj al-
a wide variety of subjects: philology, history, philosophy and
Isfahani.
art. The reference section contains language, biographical
and other dictionaries, encyclopaedias, bibliographical The National Library's Jewish stocks are some of the largest in
publications and catalogues from the end of the last century the world: 45,000 books, more than 900 different periodicals
and from recent times. The collection is rich in the traditional and a large quantity of newspapers. The main sections —
Chinese literature and the fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, Hebrew and Yiddish — contain literature published in this
which is often a blank spot in Russian libraries. The great country and abroad from the fifteenth century to the present
writer Lu Xun (1881-1936) accounts for 500 volumes of his day. The most complete category of works are Hebrew books
own works and literature about him. produced in Russia, from the first early-nineteenth-century
examples onwards. Especially precious are the early printed
The Japanese stocks are also extensive and rich. Among them
works, which include incunabula and palaeotypes. The
are the works of such famous writers as Akutagawa
Yiddish section also consists chiefly of Russian publications. It
Ryunosuke, Natsume Soseki and Ishikawa Takuboku; splendid
includes, apart from books, the first Russian "jargon"
series — Modern Japanese Literature (90 volumes) and
magazines and newspapers, and also early Soviet periodicals.
Literature of the Showa Era (60 volumes); major works on
In the Jewish stocks too one can find rare material in Ladino,
linguistics, philosophy and economics; numerous reference
Judaeo-Persian and Judaeo-Tadjik, as well as Samaritan,
publications, such as the 15-volume Historical Encyclopaedia
Syriac and other Semitic languages.
or the 20-volume Complete Dictionary of the Japanese
Language; catalogues of the largest libraries in Japan; and
periodicals (1,700 titles) covering various fields of learning.
The library can boast an extremely rich collection of
The Sampler of Letters and the Handbook on Calligraphy. "Orientalia" — books and periodicals in the field of Oriental
Nagoya, 1903 studies in Western European languages. Rare printed works
have been accumulating here since the early nineteenth
The Sampler of Letters and the Handbook on Calligraphy.
century: scholarly editions of classic works of Eastern
Nagoya, 1903 literature, linguistic researches, dictionaries, catalogues of
the largest manuscript repositories. Quite a number of them
The Japanese Hieroglyphic Explanatory Dictionary. Osaka, date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
1902

The Japanese Hieroglyphic Explanatory Dictionary.

Osaka, 1902