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International African Institute Essais d'histoire littéraire africaine by Albert Gerard Review by: Willfried F. Feuser Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 56, No. 3 (1986), p. 374 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1160702 . Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:21 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Cambridge University Press and International African Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Africa: Journal of the International African Institute. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:21:06 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Essais d'histoire littéraire africaineby Albert Gerard

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Page 1: Essais d'histoire littéraire africaineby Albert Gerard

International African Institute

Essais d'histoire littéraire africaine by Albert GerardReview by: Willfried F. FeuserAfrica: Journal of the International African Institute, Vol. 56, No. 3 (1986), p. 374Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International African InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1160702 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Cambridge University Press and International African Institute are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Africa: Journal of the International African Institute.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 62.122.76.60 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:21:06 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Page 2: Essais d'histoire littéraire africaineby Albert Gerard

ALBERT GERARD, Essais d'histoire litteraire africaine. Sherbrooke, Quebec: Naaman; Paris: Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique, 1984, 248 pp.

African literature has come a long way. It may have been a university discipline for barely a quarter of a century, but its leading historian, Albert S. Gerard, opens up new vistas on its earlier existence which take us back to its documented beginnings some 1500 years ago, while at the same time he reminds us that the written art first reached parts of Black Africa through the Sabaeans in the eighth century before Christ. His latest book, Essais d'histoire litteraire africaine, synthesises in one volume the double thrust of his literary researches, the one dealing with literatures in African languages (Four African Literatures: Xhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Amharic, Berkeley, 1971, and African Language Literatures: an introduction to the literary history of sub-Saharan Africa, Washington & London, 1983), and the other with the literary manifestations of Black Africa in European languages (Etudes de litterature africaine francophone, Dakar-Abidjan, 1977, and his two volume European- Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, Budapest, 1986).

A multilingual and historical perspective informs most of the sixteen essays in the volume. This is particularly true of the case studies of Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana grouped together in the chapter 'Approches nationales'. Although, regrettably, no clear-cut definition of'national literature' in the African context is attempted, Gerard's concept of it is implicitly based on the assumption of a rich linguistic and cultural diversity within any given country, and not on the monopoly of the exolect (English, French or Portuguese) that country happens to have adopted as its official language. Gerard gives the credit for having initiated the national approach in the study of African literatures to Soviet scholarship, while according to him 'Western and West African critics have preferred to consider Anglophone literatures as a consolidated whole, without taking into account national distinctions' (p. 204). One may, however, recall that the first book-length study of a national literature in anglophone West Africa was by a Western critic, Bruce King (Introduction to Nigerian Literature, Lagos, 1971, not Literatures, as wrongly quoted on p. 229), which had been preceded by a chapter on Nigerian literature in a book by the present writer (Aspectos da Literatura do Mundo Negro, Salvador, 1969). In any event A. Gerard enriches the national approach by assessing the Arabic contribution to the emergent literatures of West Africa by authors like Malik Sy and Amadou Bamba M'Backe (Senegal) and Umar ibn Abubakar ibn Usman al-Kabbawi al-Kanawi and Mahmud ibn Abdallah (Ghana). Under Ghana he equally treats the eighteenth-century Latin writers Amo and Capitein, as well as the development of literatures in Fanti, Akwapem-Twi, Ashanti, Ewe, etc., before turning to English-language writing from Casely Hayford to Ayi Kwei Armah.

Other chapters deal with the anglophone giants (South Africa, Nigeria), unknown literatures (Kikongo, Malagasy), the regional approach (East Africa, Islamic literature in West Africa), and the relationships between modern and traditional, Western and African literatures. This book is one of the most essential and stimulating works in African literary historiography of the last ten years.

WILLFRIED F. FEUSER

University of Port Harcourt

GEORGIA MCGARRY (ed.), Reaction and Protest in the West African Press: a collection of newspaper articles on five nineteenth-century African leaders. Leiden: Afrika Studiecentrum; Cambridge: African Studies Centre, 1978, 197 pp., ?6.00.

The Africanist academic community should be grateful to Georgia McGarry for this presentation of newspaper pieces on five nineteenth-century African nationalists. This enables the researcher and interested reader to get to grips with the word as expressed by participants ofthe.time, rather than looking at it through the spectacles of the historian. The five leaders selected for scrutiny are, in the order in which they appear, Jaja of Opobo

ALBERT GERARD, Essais d'histoire litteraire africaine. Sherbrooke, Quebec: Naaman; Paris: Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique, 1984, 248 pp.

African literature has come a long way. It may have been a university discipline for barely a quarter of a century, but its leading historian, Albert S. Gerard, opens up new vistas on its earlier existence which take us back to its documented beginnings some 1500 years ago, while at the same time he reminds us that the written art first reached parts of Black Africa through the Sabaeans in the eighth century before Christ. His latest book, Essais d'histoire litteraire africaine, synthesises in one volume the double thrust of his literary researches, the one dealing with literatures in African languages (Four African Literatures: Xhosa, Sotho, Zulu, Amharic, Berkeley, 1971, and African Language Literatures: an introduction to the literary history of sub-Saharan Africa, Washington & London, 1983), and the other with the literary manifestations of Black Africa in European languages (Etudes de litterature africaine francophone, Dakar-Abidjan, 1977, and his two volume European- Language Writing in Sub-Saharan Africa, Budapest, 1986).

A multilingual and historical perspective informs most of the sixteen essays in the volume. This is particularly true of the case studies of Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ghana grouped together in the chapter 'Approches nationales'. Although, regrettably, no clear-cut definition of'national literature' in the African context is attempted, Gerard's concept of it is implicitly based on the assumption of a rich linguistic and cultural diversity within any given country, and not on the monopoly of the exolect (English, French or Portuguese) that country happens to have adopted as its official language. Gerard gives the credit for having initiated the national approach in the study of African literatures to Soviet scholarship, while according to him 'Western and West African critics have preferred to consider Anglophone literatures as a consolidated whole, without taking into account national distinctions' (p. 204). One may, however, recall that the first book-length study of a national literature in anglophone West Africa was by a Western critic, Bruce King (Introduction to Nigerian Literature, Lagos, 1971, not Literatures, as wrongly quoted on p. 229), which had been preceded by a chapter on Nigerian literature in a book by the present writer (Aspectos da Literatura do Mundo Negro, Salvador, 1969). In any event A. Gerard enriches the national approach by assessing the Arabic contribution to the emergent literatures of West Africa by authors like Malik Sy and Amadou Bamba M'Backe (Senegal) and Umar ibn Abubakar ibn Usman al-Kabbawi al-Kanawi and Mahmud ibn Abdallah (Ghana). Under Ghana he equally treats the eighteenth-century Latin writers Amo and Capitein, as well as the development of literatures in Fanti, Akwapem-Twi, Ashanti, Ewe, etc., before turning to English-language writing from Casely Hayford to Ayi Kwei Armah.

Other chapters deal with the anglophone giants (South Africa, Nigeria), unknown literatures (Kikongo, Malagasy), the regional approach (East Africa, Islamic literature in West Africa), and the relationships between modern and traditional, Western and African literatures. This book is one of the most essential and stimulating works in African literary historiography of the last ten years.

WILLFRIED F. FEUSER

University of Port Harcourt

GEORGIA MCGARRY (ed.), Reaction and Protest in the West African Press: a collection of newspaper articles on five nineteenth-century African leaders. Leiden: Afrika Studiecentrum; Cambridge: African Studies Centre, 1978, 197 pp., ?6.00.

The Africanist academic community should be grateful to Georgia McGarry for this presentation of newspaper pieces on five nineteenth-century African nationalists. This enables the researcher and interested reader to get to grips with the word as expressed by participants ofthe.time, rather than looking at it through the spectacles of the historian. The five leaders selected for scrutiny are, in the order in which they appear, Jaja of Opobo

374 374 REVIEWS REVIEWS

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