The most notable literary selections are those that capture the _ of the African people.

The journal, according to its founder, was an endeavor "to help define African originality and to hasten its introduction into the modern world.”

Negritude writers wrote poetry in French in which they presented African traditions and cultures as

The texts for the study of African literature shed light on controversial issues such as ,

the self-affirmation of black people, or the affirmation of the values of civilization of something defined as

emerged out of "a sudden grasp of racial identity and of cultural values and an awareness "of the wide discrepancies which existed between the promise of the French system of assimilation and the reality."

flourished as the literary genres.

are epithets called out in reference to an object (a person, a town, an animal, a disease, and so on) in celebration of its outstanding qualities and achievements.

writers wrote poetry in French in which they presented African traditions and cultures as antithetical, but equal, to European culture.

In the 1930s, black intellectuals from French colonies living in Paris initiated a literary movement called

where written works have been discovered that appeared before the earliest literatures in the Celtic and Germanic languages of Western Europe.

are short, witty or ironic statements, metaphorical in its formulation which aim to communicate a response to a particular situation, to offer advice, or to be persuasive.

three waves of literacy

The written literatures, novels, plays, and poems in the 1950s and 60s have been described as

The African authors who produced literatures in European languages have been described as

Includes novels, plays, poems, hymns, and tales.

The people’s struggle to cope with – or oppose – the changing atmosphere of their homelands was dramatically recorded in what is known as

flourished in Africa for many centuries and take a variety of forms including folk tales, myths, epics, funeral dirges, praise poems, and proverbs.

became vehicles of cultural thoughts. Around a hundred languages are widely used for inter-ethnic communication. 

 are spoken by tens of millions of people.

The second wave of literacy moved across _ with the spread of Islam.

There have been significant struggles that could have been left untouched, but writers choose to face courageous task of

through trade relationships, missionary activities, and colonialism propelled the third wave of literacy in Africa.

chanted during funeral ceremonies, lament the departed, praise his/her memory, and ask for his/her protection.

usually explain the interrelationships of all things that exist, and provide for the group and its members a necessary sense of their place in relation to their environment and the forces that order events on earth.

are elaborate literary forms, usually performed only by experts on special occasions. They often recount the heroic exploits of ancestors.

The literary tradition of Africa became