African literature, the body of traditional oral and written literatures in Afro-Asiatic and African languages together with works written by Africans in European languages. Traditional written literature, which is limited to a smaller geographic area than is oral literature, is most characteristic of those sub-Saharan cultures that have participated in the cultures of the Mediterranean. In particular, there are written literatures in both Hausa and Arabic, created by the scholars of what is now northern Nigeria, and the Somali people have produced a traditional written literature. There are also works written in Geʿez (Ethiopic) and Amharic, two of the languages of Ethiopia, which is the one part of Africa where Christianity has been practiced long enough to be considered traditional. Works written in European languages date primarily from the 20th century onward. The literature of South Africa in English and Afrikaans is also covered in a separate article, South African literature. See also African theatre.
The relationship between oral and written traditions and in particular between oral and modern written literatures is one of great complexity and not a matter of simple evolution. Modern African literatures were born in the educational systems imposed by colonialism, with models drawn from Europe rather than existing African traditions. But the African oral traditions exerted their own influence on these literatures.
The storyteller speaks, time collapses, and the members of the audience are in the presence of history. It is a time of masks. Reality, the present, is here, but with explosive emotional images giving it a context. This is the storyteller’s art: to mask the past, making it mysterious, seemingly inaccessible. But it is inaccessible only to one’s present intellect; it is always available to one’s heart and soul, one’s emotions. The storyteller combines the audience’s present waking state and its past condition of semiconsciousness, and so the audience walks again in history, joining its forebears. And history, always more than an academic subject, becomes for the audience a collapsing of time. History becomes the audience’s memory and a means of reliving of an indeterminate and deeply obscure past.
Storytelling is a sensory union of image and idea, a process of re-creating the past in terms of the present; the storyteller uses realistic images to describe the present and fantasy images to evoke and embody the substance of a culture’s experience of the past. These ancient fantasy images are the culture’s heritage and the storyteller’s bounty: they contain the emotional history of the culture, its most deeply felt yearnings and fears, and they therefore have the capacity to elicit strong emotional responses from members of audiences. During a performance, these envelop contemporary images—the most unstable parts of the oral tradition, because they are by their nature always in a state of flux—and thereby visit the past on the present.
It is the task of the storyteller to forge the fantasy images of the past into masks of the realistic images of the present, enabling the performer to pitch the present to the past, to visualize the present within a context of—and therefore in terms of—the past. Flowing through this potent emotional grid is a variety of ideas that have the look of antiquity and ancestral sanction. Story occurs under the mesmerizing influence of performance—the body of the performer, the music of her voice, the complex relationship between her and her audience. It is a world unto itself, whole, with its own set of laws. Images that are unlike are juxtaposed, and then the storyteller reveals—to the delight and instruction of the members of the audience—the linkages between them that render them homologous. In this way the past and the present are blended; ideas are thereby generated, forming a conception of the present. Performance gives the images their context and ensures the audience a ritual experience that bridges past and present and shapes contemporary life.
Storytelling is alive, ever in transition, never hardened in time. Stories are not meant to be temporally frozen; they are always responding to contemporary realities, but in a timeless fashion. Storytelling is therefore not a memorized art. The necessity for this continual transformation of the story has to do with the regular fusing of fantasy and images of the real, contemporary world. Performers take images from the present and wed them to the past, and in that way the past regularly shapes an audience’s experience of the present. Storytellers reveal connections between humans—within the world, within a society, within a family—emphasizing an interdependence and the disaster that occurs when obligations to one’s fellows are forsaken. The artist makes the linkages, the storyteller forges the bonds, tying past and present, joining humans to their gods, to their leaders, to their families, to those they love, to their deepest fears and hopes, and to the essential core of their societies and beliefs.
The language of storytelling includes, on the one hand, image, the patterning of image, and the manipulation of the body and voice of the storyteller and, on the other, the memory and present state of the audience. A storytelling performance involves memory: the recollection of each member of the audience of his experiences with respect to the story being performed, the memory of his real-life experiences, and the similar memories of the storyteller. It is the rhythm of storytelling that welds these disparate experiences, yearnings, and thoughts into the images of the story. And the images are known, familiar to the audience. That familiarity is a crucial part of storytelling. The storyteller does not craft a story out of whole cloth: she re-creates the ancient story within the context of the real, contemporary, known world. It is the metaphorical relationship between these memories of the past and the known images of the world of the present that constitutes the essence of storytelling. The story is never history; it is built of the shards of history. Images are removed from historical contexts, then reconstituted within the demanding and authoritative frame of the story. And it is always a sensory experience, an experience of the emotions. Storytellers know that the way to the mind is by way of the heart. The interpretative effects of the storytelling experience give the members of the audience a refreshed sense of reality, a context for their experiences that has no existence in reality. It is only when images of contemporary life are woven into the ancient familiar images that metaphor is born and experience becomes meaningful.
Stories deal with change: mythic transformations of the cosmos, heroic transformations of the culture, transformations of the lives of everyman. The storytelling experience is always ritual, always a rite of passage; one relives the past and, by so doing, comes to insight about present life. Myth is both a story and a fundamental structural device used by storytellers. As a story, it reveals change at the beginning of time, with gods as the central characters. As a storytelling tool for the creation of metaphor, it is both material and method. The heroic epic unfolds within the context of myth, as does the tale. At the heart of each of these genres is metaphor, and at the core of metaphor is riddle with its associate, proverb. Each of these oral forms is characterized by a metaphorical process, the result of patterned imagery. These universal art forms are rooted in the specificities of the African experience.
A pot without an opening. (An egg.)
The silly man who drags his intestines. (A needle and thread.)
In the riddle, two unlike, and sometimes unlikely, things are compared. The obvious thing that happens during this comparison is that a problem is set, then solved. But there is something more important here, involving the riddle as a figurative form: the riddle is composed of two sets, and, during the process of riddling, the aspects of each of the sets are transferred to the other. On the surface it appears that the riddle is largely an intellectual rather than a poetic activity. But through its imagery and the tension between the two sets, the imagination of the audience is also engaged. As they seek the solution to the riddle, the audience itself becomes a part of the images and therefore—and most significantly—of the metaphorical transformation.
This may not seem a very complex activity on the level of the riddle, but in this deceptively simple activity can be found the essential core of all storytelling, including the interaction of imagery in lyric poetry, the tale, and the epic. In the same way as those oral forms, the riddle works in a literal and in a figurative mode. During the process of riddling, the literal mode interacts with the figurative in a vigorous and creative way. It is that play between the literal and the figurative, between reality and fantasy, that characterizes the riddle: in that relationship can be found metaphor, which explains why it is that the riddle underlies other oral forms. The images in metaphor by their nature evoke emotion; the dynamics of metaphor trap those emotions in the images, and meaning is caught up in that activity. So meaning, even in such seemingly simple operations as riddling, is more complex than it may appear.
People were those who
Broke for me the string.
Therefore,
The place became like this to me,
On account of it,
Because the string was that which broke for me.
Therefore,
The place does not feel to me,
As the place used to feel to me,
On account of it.
For,
The place feels as if it stood open before me,
Because the string has broken for me.
Therefore,
The place does not feel pleasant to me,
On account of it.
The images in African lyric interact in dynamic fashion, establishing metaphorical relationships within the poem, and so it is that riddling is the motor of the lyric. And, as in riddles, so also in lyric: metaphor frequently involves and invokes paradox. In the lyric, it is as if the singer were stitching a set of riddles into a single richly textured poem, the series of riddling connections responsible for the ultimate experience of the poem. The singer organizes and controls the emotions of the audience as he systematically works his way through the levels of the poem, carefully establishing the connective threads that bring the separate metaphorical sets into the poem’s totality. None of the separate riddling relationships exists divorced from those others that compose the poem. As these riddling relationships interact and interweave, the poet brings the audience to a close, intense sense of the meaning of the poem. Each riddling relationship provides an emotional clue to the overall design of the poem. Further clues to meaning are discovered by the audience in the rhythmical aspects of the poem, the way the poet organizes the images, the riddling organization itself, and the sound of the singer’s voice as well as the movement of the singer’s body. As in the riddle, everything in the lyric is directed to the revelation of metaphor.
Work the clay while it is fresh.
Wisdom killed the wise man.
The African proverb seems initially to be a hackneyed expression, a trite leftover repeated until it loses all force. But proverb is also performance, it is also metaphor, and it is in its performance and metaphorical aspects that it achieves its power. In one sense, the experience of a proverb is similar to that of a riddle and a lyric poem: different images are brought into a relationship that is novel, that provides insight. When one experiences proverbs in appropriate contexts, rather than in isolation, they come to life. In the riddle the poser provides the two sides of the metaphor. In lyric poetry the two sides are present in the poem but in a complex way; the members of the audience derive their aesthetic experience from comprehending that complexity. The words of the proverb are by themselves only one part of the metaphorical experience. The other side of the riddle is not to be found in the same way it is in the riddle and the lyric. The proverb establishes ties with its metaphorical equivalent in the real life of the members of the audience or with the wisdom of the past. The words of the proverb are a riddle waiting to happen. And when it happens, the African proverb ceases to be a grouping of tired words.
The riddle, lyric, and proverb are the materials that are at the dynamic centre of the tale. The riddle contains within it the possibilities of metaphor; and the proverb elaborates the metaphorical possibilities when the images of the tale are made lyrical—that is, when they are rhythmically organized. Such images are drawn chiefly from two repertories: from the contemporary world (these are the realistic images) and from the ancient tradition (these are the fantasy images). These diverse images are brought together during a storytelling performance by their rhythmic organization. Because the fantasy images have the capacity to elicit strong emotional reactions from members of the audience, these emotions are the raw material that is woven into the image organization by the patterning. The audience thereby becomes an integral part of the story by becoming a part of the metaphorical process that moves to meaning. And meaning, therefore, is much more complex than an obvious homily that may be readily available on the surface of the tale.
This patterning of imagery is the main instrument that shapes a tale. In the simplest of tales, a model is established, and then it is repeated in an almost identical way. In a Xhosa story an ogre chases a woman and her two children. With each part of the story, as the ogre moves closer and as the woman and her children are more intensely imperiled, a song organizes the emotions of helplessness, of menace, and of terror, even as it moves the story on its linear path:
Qwebethe, Qwebethe, what do you want?
I’m leaving my food behind on the prairie,
I’m leaving it behind,
I’m leaving it behind.
With little more than a brief introduction and a quick close, the storyteller develops this tale. There is an uninterrupted linear movement of a realistic single character fleeing from a fantasy ogre—from a conflict to a resolution. But that fantasy and that reality are controlled by the lyrical centre of the tale, and that seemingly simple mechanism provides the core for complexity. That linear movement, even in the simplest stories, is subverted by a cyclical movement—in this case, the song—and that is the engine of metaphor. It is the cyclical movement of the tale that makes it possible to experience linear details and images in such a way that they become equated one with the other. So it is that the simplest tale becomes a model for more-complex narratives. That lyrical centre gives the tale a potential for development.
In a more complex tale, the storyteller moves two characters through three worlds, each of those worlds seemingly different. But by means of that lyrical pulse, the rhythmical ordering of those worlds brings them into such alignment that the members of the audience experience them as the same. It is this discernment of different images as identical that results in complex structures, characters, events, and meanings. And what brings those different images into this alignment is poetry—more specifically, the metaphorical character of the lyrical poem. The very composition of tales makes it possible to link them and to order them metaphorically. The possibilities of epic are visible in the simplest of tales, and so also are the possibilities of the novel.
The trickster tale, as it does with so much of the oral tradition, provides insights into this matter of the construction of stories. Masks are the weapons of the trickster: he creates illusions, bringing the real world and the world of illusion into temporary, shimmering proximity, convincing his dupe of the reality of metaphor. That trickster and his antic activities are another way of describing the metaphorical motor of storytelling.
Hero who surpasses other heroes!
Swallow that disappears in the clouds,
Others disappearing into the heavens!
Son of Menzi!
Viper of Ndaba!
Erect, ready to strike,
It strikes the shields of men!
Father of the cock!
Why did it disappear over the mountains?
It annihilated men!
That is Shaka,
Son of Senzangakhona,
Of whom it is said, Bayede!
You are an elephant!
It is in heroic poetry, or panegyric, that lyric and image come into their most obvious union. As in the tale and as in the lyric, riddle, and proverb, the essence of panegyric is metaphor, although the metaphorical connections are sometimes somewhat obscure. History is more clearly evident in panegyric, but it remains fragmented history, rejoined according to the poetic intentions of the bard. Obvious metaphorical connections are frequently made between historical personages or events and images of animals, for example. The fantasy aspects of this kind of poetry are to be found in its construction, in the merging of the real and the animal in metaphorical ways. It is within this metaphorical context that the hero is described and assessed. As in other forms of oral tradition, emotions associated with both historical and nonhistorical images are at the heart of meaning in panegyric. It is the lyrical rhythm of panegyric that works such emotions into form. In the process, history is reprocessed and given new meaning within the context of contemporary experience. It is a dual activity: history is thereby redefined at the same time that it shapes experiences of the present.
Among the Tuareg of western Africa, a stringed instrument often accompanies the creation of such poetry, and the main composers are women. The Songhai have mabe, the professional bards; they are present at all rites of passage, celebrating, accompanying, and cushioning the transformation being experienced. In Mauritania it is the iggiw (plural iggawen) who creates heroic poetry and who plays the lute while singing the songs of the warriors. The diare (plural diarou) is the bard among the Soninke. He goes to battle with the soldiers, urging them, placing their martial activities within the context of history, building their acts within the genealogies of their family. Drums and trumpets sometimes accompany the maroka among the Hausa. When a king is praised, the accompaniment becomes orchestral. Yoruba bards chant the ijala, singing of lineage, and, with the oriki, saluting the notable. Among the Hima of Uganda, the bard is the omwevugi. In the evenings, he sings of the omugabe, the king, and of men in battle and of the cattle. The mbongi wa ku pfusha is the bard among the Tonga of Mozambique. He too sings of the glories of the past, creating poetry about chiefs and kings.
The images vary, their main organizing implement being the subject of the poem. It is the metrical ordering of images, including sound and motion, that holds the poem together, not the narrative of history.
In the epic can be found the merging of various frequently unrelated tales, the metaphorical apparatus, the controlling mechanism found in the riddle and lyric, the proverb, and heroic poetry to form a larger narrative. All of this centres on the character of the hero and a gradual revelation of his frailty, uncertainties, and torments; he often dies, or is deeply troubled, in the process of bringing the culture into a new dispensation often prefigured in his resurrection or his coming into knowledge. The mythical transformation caused by the creator gods and culture heroes is reproduced precisely in the acts and the cyclical, tortured movements of the hero.
An epic may be built around a genealogical system, with parts of it developed and embellished into a story. The epic, like the heroic poem, contains historical references such as place-names and events; in the heroic poem these are not greatly developed. When they are developed in an epic, they are built not around history but around a fictional tale. The fictional tale ties the historical episode, person, or place-name to the cultural history of the people. In an oral society, oral genres include history (the heroic poem) and imaginative story (the tale). The epic combines the two, linking the historical episode to the imaginative tale. Sometimes, myth is also a part of epic, with emphasis on origins. The tale, the heroic poem, history, and myth are combined in the epic. In an echo of the tale—where the emphasis is commonly on a central but always nonhistorical character—a single historical or nonhistorical character is the centre of the epic. And at the core of the epic is that same engine composed of the riddle, the lyric, and the proverb.
Much is frequently made of the psychology of this central character when he appears in the epic. He is given greater detail than the tale character, given deeper dimension. The epic performer remembers the great events and turning points of cultural history. These events change the culture. In the epic these elements are tied to the ancient images of the culture (in the form of tale and myth), an act that thereby gives these events cultural sanction. The tale and myth lend to the epic (and, by inference, to history) a magical, supernatural atmosphere: all of nature is touched in the Malagasy epic Ibonia; in the West African epic Sunjata, magic keeps Sumanguru in charge and enables Sunjata to take over. It is a time of momentous change in the society. In Ibonia there are major alterations in the relationship between men and women; in Sunjata and in the epic Mwindo of the Nyanga people of Congo there are major political changes.
But, in Mwindo, why was Mwindo such a trickster? He was, after all, a great hero. And why must he be taught by the gods after he has established his heroic credentials? Central to this question is the notion of the transitional phase—of the betwixt and between, of the someone or something that crosses yet exists between boundaries. There is a paradox in Mwindo’s vulnerability—how, after all, can a hero be vulnerable?—but more important is his nonmoral energy during a period of change. Mwindo is a liminal hero-trickster: he is liminal while he seeks his father, and then he becomes liminal again at the hands of the gods. “Out there” is where the learning, the transformation, occurs. The trickster energy befits and mirrors this in-between period, as no laws are in existence. There is change and transformation, but it is guided by a vision: in the myths, it is god’s vision for the cosmos; in the tales, it is the society’s vision for completeness; in the epics, it is the hero’s vision for a new social dispensation.
The heroic epic is a grand blending of tale and myth, heroic poetry and history. These separate genres are combined in the epic, and separate epics contain a greater or lesser degree of each—history (and, to a lesser extent, poetry) is dominant in Sunjata, heroic poetry and tale in Ibonia, and tale and myth (and, to a lesser extent, poetry) in Mwindo. Oral societies have these separate categories: history, the imaginative tale, heroic poetry, myth, and epic. Epic, therefore, is not simply history. History exists as a separate genre. The essential characteristic of epic is not that it is history but that it combines history and tale, fact and fancy, and worlds of reality and fantasy. The epic becomes the grand summation of the culture because it takes major turning points in history (always with towering historical or nonhistorical figures who symbolize these turning points) and links them to tradition, giving the changes their sanction. The epic hero may be revolutionary, but he does not signal a total break with the past. Continuity is stressed in epic—in fact, it is as if the shift in the direction of the society is a return to the paradigm envisioned by ancient cultural wisdom. The effect of the epic is to mythologize history, to bring history to the essence of the culture, to give history the resonance of the ancient roots of the culture as these are expressed in myth, imaginative tale (and motif), and metaphor. In heroic poetry, history is fragmented, made discontinuous. In epic these discontinuous images are given a new form, that of the imaginative tale. And the etiological aspects of history (that is, the historical alteration of the society) are tied to the etiology of mythology—in other words, the acts of the mortal hero are tied to the acts of the immortals.
History is not the significant genre involved in the epic. It is instead tale and myth that organize the images of history and give those images their meaning. History by itself has no significance: it achieves significance when it is juxtaposed to the images of a tradition grounded in tales and myths. This suggests the great value that oral societies place on the imaginative traditions: they are entertaining, certainly, but they are also major organizing devices. As the tales take routine, everyday experiences of reality and—by placing them in the fanciful context of conflict and resolution with the emotion-evoking motifs of the past—give them a meaning and a completeness that they do not actually have, so in epic is history given a form and a meaning that it does not possess. This imaginative environment revises history, takes historical experiences and places them into the context of the culture, and gives them cultural meaning. The epic is a blending, then, of the ancient culture as it is represented through imaginative tradition with historical events and personages. The divine trickster links heaven and earth, god and human; the epic hero does the same but also links fancy and reality, myth and history, and cultural continuity and historical disjunction.
What is graphically clear in the epics Ibonia and Sunjata is that heroic poetry, in the form of the praise name, provides a context for the evolution of a heroic story. In both of those epics, the panegyric forms a pattern, the effect of which is to tie the epic hero decisively and at the same time to history and to the gods. Those epics, as well as Mwindo, dramatize the rite of passage of a society or a culture: the hero’s movement through the familiar stages of the ritual becomes a poetic metaphor for a like movement of the society itself. The tale at the centre of the epic may be as straightforward as any tale in the oral tradition. But that tale is linked to a complex of other tales, the whole given an illusion of poetic unity by the heroic poetry, which in turn provides a lyrical rhythm.
Storytelling is the mythos of a society: at the same time that it is conservative, at the heart of nationalism, it is the propelling mechanism for change. The struggle between the individual and the group, between the traditions that support and defend the rights of the group and the sense of freedom that argues for undefined horizons of the individual—this is the contest that characterizes the hero’s dilemma, and the hero in turn is the personification of the quandary of the society itself and of its individual members.
Oral and written storytelling traditions have had a parallel development, and in many ways they have influenced each other. Ancient Egyptian scribes, early Hausa and Swahili copyists and memorizers, and contemporary writers of popular novellas have been the obvious and crucial transitional figures in the movement from oral to literary traditions. What happened among the Hausa and Swahili was occurring elsewhere in Africa—among the Fulani, in northern Ghana among the Guang, in Senegal among the Tukulor and Wolof, and in Madagascar and Somalia.
The linkage between oral tradition and the written word is most obviously seen in pulp literature: the Onitsha market literature of Nigeria; the popular fiction of Accra, Ghana; the popular love and detective literature of Nairobi; the visualizing of story in the complex comic strips sold in shops in Cape Town. But the linkage is also a crucial characteristic of more-serious and more-complex fiction. One cannot fully appreciate the works of Chinua Achebe or Ousmane Sembene without placing them into the context of Africa’s classical period, its oral tradition. To be sure, the Arabic, English, French, and Portuguese literary traditions along with Christianity and Islam and other effects of colonialism in Africa also had a dynamic impact on African literature, but African writers adapted those alien traditions and made them their own by placing them into these African classical frames.
As is the case with the oral tradition, written literature is a combination of the real and the fantastic. It combines, on the one hand, the real (the contemporary world) and history (the realistic world of the past) and, on the other, myth and hero, with metaphor being the agent of transformation. This is the alchemy of the literary experience. Literature is atomized, fragmented history. Transformation is the crucial activity of the story, its dynamic movement. The writer is examining the relationship of the reader with the world and with history. In the process of this examination, the writer invents characters and events that correspond to history but are not history. At the centre of the story is myth, the fantasy element, a character or event that moves beyond reality, though it is always rooted in the real. In the oral tale this is clearly the fantasy character; so it is, in a complex, refracted way, in written literature.
Myth, which is deeply, intensely emotional, has to do with the gods and creation, with the essence of a belief system; it is the imaged embodiment of a philosophical system, the giving of form to thought and emotion. It is the driving force of a people, that emotional force that defines a people; it is the everlasting form of a culture, hence its link to the gods, to the heavens, to the forever. In mythic imagery is the embodiment of significant emotions—the hopes, fears, dreams, and nightmares—of a people. History—the story of a people, their institutions, and their community—is the way one likes to think things happened, in the real world. The hero is everyman, moving through a change, a transformation, and so moving into the myth, the essence, of his history. He thereby becomes a part of it, representative of it, embodying the culture. The hero is everyman with myth inside him. He has been mythicized; story does that. Metaphor is the transformational process, the movement from the real to the mythic and back again to the real—changed forever, because one has become mythicized, because one has moved into history and returned with the elixir.
In serious literary works, the mythic fantasy characters are often derived from the oral tradition; such characters include the Fool in Sheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1961), Kihika (and the mythicized Mugo) in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s A Grain of Wheat (1967), Michael K in J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K (1983), Dan and Sello in Bessie Head’s A Question of Power (1973), Mustapha in al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ’s Season of Migration to the North (1966), and Nedjma in Kateb Yacine’s Nedjma (1956). These are the ambiguous, charismatic shapers, those with connections to the essence of history. In each case, a real-life character moves into a relationship with a mythic character, and that movement is the movement of the hero’s becoming a part of history, of culture. The real-life character is the hero who is in the process of being created: Samba Diallo, Mugo, the doctor, Elizabeth, the narrator, or the four pilgrims. Myth is the stuff of which the hero is being created. History is the real, the past, the world against which this transformation is occurring and within which the hero will move. The real contemporary world is the place from which the hero comes and to which the hero will return. Metaphor is the hero’s transformation.
The image of Africa, then, is that rich combination of myth and history, with the hero embodying the essence of the history, or battling it, or somehow having a relationship with it by means of the fantasy mythic character. It is in this relationship between reality and fantasy, the shaped and the shaper, that the story has its power: Samba Diallo with the Fool, Mugo with Kihika (and the mythicized Mugo), the doctor with Michael K, Elizabeth with Dan and Sello, the narrator with Mustapha, the four pilgrims with Nedjma. This relationship, which is a harbinger of change, occurs against a historical backdrop of some kind, but that backdrop is not the image of Africa: that image is the relationship between the mythical character and African/European history.
The fantasy character provides access to history, to the essence of history. It is the explanation of the historical background of the novels. The hero is the person who is being brought into a new relationship with that history, be it the history of a certain area—Kenya or South Africa or Algeria, for example—or of a wider area—of Africa generally or, in the case of A Question of Power, the history of the world. These are the keys, then: the hero who is being shaped, the fantasy character who is the ideological and spiritual material being shaped and who is also the artist or shaper, and the larger issues, the historical panorama. The fantasy character is crucial: he is the artist’s palette, the mythic element of the story. This character is the heart and the spiritual essence of history. This is the Fool, Kihika, Michael K, Dan and Sello, Mustapha, Nedjma. Here is where reality and fantasy, history and fiction blend, the confluence that is at the heart of story. The real-life character, the hero, comes into a relationship with that mythic figure, and so the transformation begins, as the hero moves through an intermediary period into history. It is the hero’s identification with history that makes it possible for us to speak of the hero as a hero. This movement of a realistic character into myth is metaphor, the blending of two seemingly unlike images. It is the power of the story, the centre of the story, as Samba Diallo moves into the Fool, as Mugo moves into Kihika, as the doctor moves into Michael K, as Elizabeth moves into Dan and Sello, as the narrator moves into Mustapha, as the four pilgrims move into Nedjma. In this movement the oral tradition is revealed as alive and well in literary works. The kinds of imagery used by literary storytellers and the patterned way those reality and fantasy images are organized in their written works are not new. The materials of storytelling, whether in the oral or written tradition, are essentially the same.
The influence of oral traditions on modern writers
Themes in the literary traditions of contemporary Africa are worked out frequently within the strictures laid down by the imported religions Christianity and Islam and within the struggle between traditional and modern, between rural and newly urban, between genders, and between generations. The oral tradition is clearly evident in the popular literature of the marketplace and the major urban centres, created by literary storytellers who are manipulating the original materials much as oral storytellers do, at the same time remaining faithful to the tradition. Some of the early writers sharpened their writing abilities by translating works into African languages; others collected oral tradition; most experienced their apprenticeships in one way or another within the contexts of living oral traditions.
There was a clear interaction between the deeply rooted oral tradition and the developing literary traditions of the 20th century. That interaction is revealed in the placing of literary works into the forms of the oral tradition. The impact of the epic on the novel, for instance, continues to influence writers today. The oral tradition in the work of some of the early writers of the 20th century—Amos Tutuola of Nigeria, D.O. Fagunwa in Yoruba, Violet Dube in Zulu, S.E.K. Mqhayi in Xhosa, and Mario António in Portuguese—is readily evident. Some of these writings were merely imitations of the oral tradition and were therefore not influential. Such antiquarians did little more than retell, recast, or transcribe materials from the oral tradition. But the work of writers such as Tutuola had a dynamic effect on the developing literary tradition; such works went beyond mere imitation.
The most successful of the early African writers knew what could be done with the oral tradition; they understood how its structures and images could be transposed to a literary mode, and they were able to distinguish mimicry from organic growth. Guybon Sinxo explored the relationship between oral tradition and writing in his popular Xhosa novels, and A.C. Jordan (in Xhosa), O.K. Matsepe (in Sotho), and R.R.R. Dhlomo (in Zulu) built on that kind of writing, establishing new relationships not only between oral and written materials but between the written and the written—that is, between the writers of popular fiction and those writers who wished to create a more serious form of literature. The threads that connect these three categories of artistic activity are many, they are reciprocal, and they are essentially African, though there is no doubt that there was also interaction with European traditions. Writers in Africa today owe much to African oral tradition and to those authors who have occupied the space between the two traditions, in an area of creative interaction.
