Introduction to African Literature and Film

Who can compete with Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Joyce? Are there great books of African literature? Indeed, Nigerian literature is one of the great literatures of the twentieth century. Ethiopian literature is one of the oldest literatures in the world. South Africans have won more Noble Prizes for Literature in the past forty years than authors from any other country. African books have long participated in a global traffic in invention: the medieval African narrative of the Kebra Nagast may be the most important book you have never heard of; the Malian Sunjata epic shaped canonical American literature; Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard changed the way novels were written; Ferdinand Oyono’s Houseboy has been tricking careless readers for fifty years; Ken Saro Wiwa’s Sozaboy is a dazzling experiment in language; E. M. Coetzee’s Foe rewrites Western literature in a mere 160 pages; Chris Abani’s Daphne’s Lot strips masculinity bare; and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions is one of the best depictions of the perils of education to have been written. In terms of film, Senegalese films include some of the finest films ever made. In this course, we will focus on some of the best books from Africa published since 1950 and one from 1312. This course is not an introduction to African cultures; it is focused on close readings of these brilliant and difficult texts, attending to their diction, syntax, grammar, imagery, connotations, and modes of aesthetic signification. We study the richness and diversity of foundational texts of African literature—including novels, poems, and dramas)—as well as films (some originally in French or Arabic), while foregrounding questions of aesthetics, style, humor, and epistemology. Some themes will include colonialism, war, gender, and language.