Lilyan Kesteloot and the History of African Literature

Abstract

For specialists as well as for African students, indeed even for the merely curious, Lilyan Kesteloot has been indisputably, among European critics of African literature, one of the most defining figures of the literary life of the black world for the past forty years. Moreover, Africa has not been, for this scholar of Belgian origin, a simple object of study to be examined in the cold light of science, which, as we furthermore all know, is often the shamefully derelict excuse that is proffered. She chose very early on to burn with passion for Africa .... But was it truly a choice? Rather, it might be said that Africa was imposed on her through force of circumstance; her fate has been linked to it; she settled in; she lives and she works there; Africa is very much a part of her. Since 1963, the date of publication of her first work, Les ecrivains noirs de langue franfaise: naissance d'une litterature, the result of research for her thesis defended two years earlier at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Brussels, Lilyan Kesteloot's contribution to African literary criticism has been considerable. Beyond that first work of literary history, many other essays, an anthology, and critical studies with a pedagogical purpose have made her, with the passing of time, the most internationally recognized specialist of the movement: Aime Cisaire, poete d'aujourd'hui (1963), Anthologie negro-africaine: Panorama critique des prosateurs, poetes et dramaturges noirs du XXeme siecle (1967), et situation coloniale (1968), Aime Cesaire, l'homme et l'oeuvre (1973), Comprendre le Cahier d'un retour au pays natal d'Aime Cesaire (1982), Comprendre les poemes de Leopold Sedar Senghor (1986). But Lilyan Kesteloot demonstrated quite early the will to offer, beyond the Negritude movement, the broadest possible view of literary life in Africa and the black world, as can be seen in her Neufpoetes camerounais (1965), the successive reissues (1981 and 1983), with revisions and additions, of her Anthology negro-africaine, and the Memento de litterature africaine et antillaise. Histoire, oeuvres et auteurs (1995), written as a textbook for use in schools and universities.