African literature refers to literature of and from Africa. While the European perception of literature generally refers to written letters, the African concept includes oral literature (or "orature", in the term coined by Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu).
As George Joseph notes in his chapter on African literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, whereas European views of literature often stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive:
- "Literature" can also imply an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. ...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 society. Indeed, an object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build.
Read more about African Literature: Oral Literature, Precolonial Literature, Colonial African Literature, Postcolonial African Literature, Noma Award, Major Novels From African Writers, Notable African Poets, Secondary Literature
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“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
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“The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)