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
13 - Africa and the European Renaissance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- 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
If for the period extending from the end of the nineteenth century to the present, Africa’s contribution to art, ideas, and especially world literature has been duly recognized, its contribution has yet to be acknowledged for preceding centuries, and in particular for the period from the decline of the Roman Empire up until the first European explorations along the continent’s great river highways.
It has not gone unnoticed that in effect this category of African literature was “invented” in circumstances that make it more accessible to Europe, since its written beginnings are substantially in European languages and it takes over from, and sometimes counterbalances, ethnographic studies. Just as African art was “discovered” at the turn of the twentieth century and studied for the answers it might bring to the questions of form posed by Cubism, so African literature – that which emerged at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries – seems to raise questions that concern Europe itself, which was engaged forcefully and improvisationally in the process of colonization that inevitably radically modified the relationships of colonizers as well as colonized to history, language, and identity.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature , pp. 227 - 237Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000