Literature In African Languages Research Articles

Blurred lines in AC Jordan’s novel Ingqumbo Yeminyanya (The Wrath of the Ancestors): a literary geography of factual and imaginary spaces

ABSTRACT This article serves to fill a theoretical lacuna in African language literary scholarship. To date there have been very few literary geographic analyses related to South African literature and there are none that deal with African language literature. The purpose and objective of this article is to apply theoretical aspects of literary geography to an isiXhosa novel, Ingqumbo Yeminyanya. This novel, written by AC Jordan is perhaps the best known and most widely read and translated novel written in isiXhosa. The authors of this article aim to contribute to postcolonial studies by reading the novel of A.C. Jordan spatially, using Hones’s conceptual framework of the novel as a spatial event, considering the complex relationship between the author, the text, and the readers. The background of the author and the historical circumstances that surround the writing of the novel are also explored to see how Jordan’s own spaces are reflected in the novel through characterization and other techniques. The core focus of the article lies in the descriptions and relationship to real or imaginary or in-between spaces and places in relation to the research question, namely how space and places are depicted in Ingqumbo Yeminyanya, as part of the spatial event.

Relay translation and South–South imaginary: the case of Muhammad Iqbal in China

Relay translation and South–South imaginary: the case of Muhammad Iqbal in China

Alienation in Ntshavheni Alfred Milubi’s poetry

In this article, I analyse the thematization of alienation in the poetry of the Muvenḓa poet, playwright, and scholar Ntshavheni Alfred Milubi. Milubi ascribes people’s abandonment of moral values to their perpetual frustrations, herein described as alienation. Reference is made to the crumbling African traditional institutions, which, in the past, seemingly functioned as havens for the rehabilitation of alienated individuals in African communities. These institutions are shown to be triggering alienation in the modernising and globalising space, seemingly with no room for recuperation unless one heeds the poet’s clarion calls. I restrict my analysis of Milubi’s poetry only to social and cosmic alienation, guided by a fixed set of themes, namely, from society, a romantic lover, and God, respectively. The article represents the idea that African-language literatures provide insights into how the indigenes have grappled with the interface between tradition and modernity. The three forms of alienation as treated by Milubi serve as a representative sample of how Tshivenḓa poetry in particular and African-language literatures in general often register subaltern voices and the ways in which they inscribe their experiences to explain their relationship with God or god(s), society, and intimate partners, among others. This trifocal relationship is essential to the Vhavenḓa and other African communities because it reveals their concept of cosmology, community, and intimacy.

The metatext of culture and the limits of translation in Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo’s Devil on the Cross (1982)

This paper examines Ngũgĩ’s translation of his first Gĩkũyũ language novel Caitaani Mũtharaba-inĩ into English, with a view to showing how the author translates Gĩkũyũ culture and idiom into English. Starting from the premise that the act of literary creation inevitably starts within a culture, the paper proceeds from the position advanced by Nadine Gordimer that literature in indigenous African languages must be confident that it can connect with the literary culture of the outside world on its own terms (2003, p. 7). The paper goes further to shows how Ngũgĩ attempts to ensure that his translation of the novel into English does not become complicit with the linguistic and cultural hegemony of the English language while at the same time making sure that the translated text is intelligible to the English reading public. This shows the primacy of the indigenous gnosis, its language and worldview in Ngũgĩ’s practice as a writer and translator and the foremost advocate of writing in African indigenous languages. The paper comes to the conclusion that Ngũgĩ’s translation of the novel into English as Devil on the Cross makes deliberate efforts to resist the absorption of the indigenous culture and language by English.

Ìgbélárugẹ Èdè: Akinwumi Isola’s Model for Promoting African Languages

The ever-popular discussion in African literary circles is critically about language choices that African writers make in their creative endeavors. This is part of this write-up’s focus plus the plight of African languages with attention to the benefit and challenges for their empowerment. We set out to achieve two goals in this essay; first contributing to the ongoing discussions on African mother tongues, their vital roles in African literatures while characterizing pointers on proficiency and performance. Second, considering the use of Yoruba language in creative works of late Akínwùmí Oròjídé Iṣọ̀lá. Expectedly, the latter goal will exemplify the importance of indigenous languages to African writers. In pursuance of these dual goals, it is critical to highlight areas in which African writers, especially those writing in their native African languages, have endured to play crucial roles in promotion of African languages. These highlighted areas go beyond now fashionable and expressed goal of focusing on literature in African languages (splendor in African languages) onto push for fairness for languages and their speakers (linguistic justice).

Fálétí’s Philosophical Sensibility

Fálétí’s Philosophical Sensibility

Zulu Poems of (and for) Nature: Bhekinkosi Ntuli’s Environmental Imagination inImvunge Yemvelo(1972)

AbstractNature, climate crisis, and the Anthropocene have carved space in recent inter-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary humanities studies. In South Africa, such studies have barely touched literature in African languages. Nyambi and Otomo focus on the tropes of “lady nature,” nostalgia, and dystopia in Zulu writer Bhekinkosi Ntuli’sImvunge Yemveloto explore the complex ways in which these tropes test the normative epistemes of ecological crises. Beyond rejecting imperial distortions of indigenous environmentalism, Ntuli’s poems re-center local knowledge of nature in understanding its relationship with humans. That knowledge subverts epistemic structures of colonial conservation, revising and re-visioning racially geo-politicized knowledge hierarchies.

Reflections

For the past twenty years, early modern scholars have called for more scholarly attention to people and places outside of Europe. An impressive increase in literary research on non-European texts has resulted, and I describe positive aspects of this trend, using the MLA International Bibliography database. However, research on African-language literatures has declined since 2003 or has continued to flatline at nothing. A radical antiracist solution is needed, for no field can succeed with Africa as a lacuna. I call on all early modern scholars, regardless of their language knowledge, to cite at least one early modern African-language text in their next publication. I describe five such in this article, a tiny sample of the thousands of written texts that Black Africans across the continent composed in African languages before 1830. Asking early modern scholars to embrace the uncomfortable practice of “token citation” will enable these texts to circulate in the realm of knowledge and further efforts to diversify and broaden the field.

Hybridizing Gikuyu in the face of globalization: The case of Ngugi wa Thiongos novel Murogi wa Kagogo

African literature in European languages entrenches the marginalization of large communities who cannot use European languages. Therefore, the revolutionary move by the Kenyan writer, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, to write in Gikuyu is a bold step towards empowering marginalized groups in Africa. In his literary essays, Ngugi argues that in the era of globalization African languages should enrich themselves by entering into dialogue with other languages of the world. A reading of Ngugi’s novel, Murogi wa Kagogo, using insights from sociolinguistics, reveals that Ngugi achieves this through hybridizing Gikuyu with English, Kiswahili, Sheng and even Latin. The article, specifically, attempts to show how Ngugi has hybridized Gikuyu using strategies like codeswitching, borrowing and diglossia. Drawing on Murogi wa Kagogo, this article argues that literature in African languages must embrace the strategies of hybridity in order to make African languages relevant to new global realities. The article further seeks to problematize the tendency by postcolonial theorists to almost wholly exclude African literature written in indigenous languages from the orbit of their critiques. This article is also an attempt to add to the few studies that exploit sociolinguistic approaches to examine literary texts. Key words: Murogi wa Kagogo, hybridity, sociolinguistics, postcolonial theory.

The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership by M?koma wa Ng?g?

Reviewed by: The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership by Mũkoma Wa Ngũgĩ Abdelkader Ben Rhit The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership BY MŨKOMA WA NGŨGĨ U of Michigan P, 2018. 228 pp. ISBN 9780472053681 paper. The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership explores the identity of African literature or rather the lost identity of African literature. In this book, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ raises the question, “What is African literature?,” which he answers with “African literature is a question to itself.” (188) He strongly disagrees with the canonization by the writers who gathered in Kampala for the first Makerere African Writers Conference, dubbed the “Conference of African Writers of English Expression.” His book raises some pertinent questions regarding African literature’s unending battle with the language issue, which has been a matter of disagreement between Ngũgĩ’s father, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Chinua Achebe. Ngũgĩ argues that writing in African languages is a necessary step toward cultural identity and independence from centuries of European exploitation, and it is part and parcel of the project of decolonization. However, Achebe argues that African identity can be expressed through English, the colonizer’s language. Although the language question features prominently in The Rise of the African Novel, Ngũgĩ’s main argument is that African literature predates the Makerere generation. He takes issue with “the elision of earlier African writings such as the South African examples” (Cajetan 228) and the longstanding assumption—cultivated by publishers and literary critics over the decades—that the “African novel” began with the Makerere generation. This, Ngũgĩ believes, is the critical issue. “What does it mean for the African literary tradition when there is an absence of sustained critical readings of African writing before the Makerere writers?” (106). In his book, the younger Ngũgĩ reiterates the vital importance of writing African literatures in African languages because writing in English has contributed to the ascendancy of English and the thriving of African literature in English at the expense of literature written in African languages, like the earlier African writings from South Africa that Ngũgĩ highlights in his book. He states, “In The Rise of the African Novel I am exploring the question of why African literature means writing in European languages” (9). To this end, Ngũgĩ proposes the reconstruction of the history of the African novel, taking into consideration the writings of those who predated the Makerere generation. [End Page 209] The book is divided into an introduction and five chapters. The introduction highlights the major issues to be discussed throughout the book, namely the identity of the African novel, the Makerere writers, and questions of language, identity, and ownership. In chapter one, “No Shrubbing in the English Metaphysical Empire, Please: A Question of Language,” Ngũgĩ explores the “various ways Makerere and post-Makerere African writers have responded to the language question in African writing” (26). In chapter two, “Amos Tutuola: Creating the African Literary Bogeyman,” Ngũgĩ considers the “aesthetic costs and opportunities of noninterventionist editing” (26). His analysis of Amos Tutuola’s The Palm Wine Drinkard (1952) reveals a poor command of English, arguing that editors did the author an injustice by leaving grammatical errors in the text. In chapter three, “Africa’s Missing Literary History: From A. C. Jordan’s Child of Two Worlds to NoViolet Bulawayo’s Fractured Multiple Worlds,” Ngũgĩ traces the genealogy of the African novel and African literary criticism beyond their conventional beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. He takes issue with critics who “chronicle African literature commencing from the “wrong literary epoch” (qtd. in Muchiri 1), showing that Africa’s body of fictional texts is enriched by reaching “back in time … and across space” (107). In chapter four, “Manufacturing the African Literary Canon: Costs and Opportunities,” he argues that the binary between what is literary and what is popular is “a false opposition” (154) because this has led to the canonization of the African political novel at the expense of other forms and genres in African writing. His creation...

Izihlahla Ezikhuluma Ngezandla (“Trees Who Talk with Hands”): Tree Poems in South African Sign Language

This article explores the way in which trees (izihlahla in isiZulu) are represented in South African Sign Language (SASL) literature. We contextualise our study in the broader field of African folklore and literature as SASL literature is steeped in deaf culture as well as that of a wider African culture of hearing people. Using a close reading approach of a selection of poems, we claim that many key features of tree symbolism and tree personification that are found in African literature and folklore (written or spoken) can also be identified in SASL literature (signed). In both literatures, the tree is seen as a symbol of growth, the circle of life, hope and knowledge, the ancestors and custodians of history, as well as a character with its own presence. Our findings highlight the modality-independent nature of human creativity
 This article explores the way in which trees (izihlahla in isiZulu) are represented in South African Sign Language (SASL) literature. We contextualise our study in the broader field of African folklore and literature as SASL literature is steeped in deaf culture as well as that of a wider African culture of hearing people. Using a close reading approach of a selection of poems, we claim that many key features of tree symbolism and tree personification that are found in African literature and folklore (written or spoken) can also be identified in SASL literature (signed). In both literatures, the tree is seen as a symbol of growth, the circle of life, hope and knowledge, the ancestors and custodians of history, as well as a character with its own presence. Our findings highlight the modality-independent nature of human creativity.

Introduction: Digging into Language

Introduction: Digging into Language Flora Veit-Wild and Clarissa Vierke The original impetus for this special issue arose out of the research project “Changing Patterns of the Shona Novel from Zimbabwe: A Linguistic Literary Analysis” directed by Flora Veit-Wild at Humboldt University in Berlin. Starting from the premise that one of the glaring gaps in contemporary African studies is the fact that linguistic and literary scholarship have largely existed side by side instead of collaborating for mutual benefit, the project aimed to establish a model for bringing together literary and linguistic research tools and methods in the field of African-language literatures. The main work of the research team consisted in establishing a computer-generated linguistic corpus from three prominent Shona novels (Berlin Shona Novel Corpus) and, on this basis, in exploring perspectives for new readings of these literary works (for details see Veit-Wild’s essay in this volume). The project, which was funded by the German Research Council (DFG) and ran from 2013 to 2016, was carried out in close cooperation with a number of Zimbabwean scholars. In a similar vein to the Berlin-based project, Clarissa Vierke and a group of researchers at the University of Bayreuth embarked on an investigation into poetry as aesthetic practice in eastern Africa. Their research project, which began in 2016 and is also DFG-funded, seeks to consider the specific effect of poetry on life worlds in eastern Africa. Language is attributed a particular importance in this project since, according to its fundamental hypothesis, language in poetry has its own way of “speaking,” i.e., it evokes a specific aesthetic experience that makes it essentially different from non-poetic discourse. The common interest of the two research groups in looking into the linguistic set-up of literary texts and aesthetic practices gave rise to the idea of co-editing a special issue of RAL entitled “Reading Closely: Investigating Textuality in Afrophone Literatures.” The epithet “reading closely” marks the stance and the motto behind this collection of articles that aims to put literary texts from Africa and their critical reception on a par with other major literatures of the world, for whom “close reading” has long since been a widely used term and method of analysis. For reasons explained further below, our focus is on literary texts in African languages. The term “Afrophone” is used to distinguish them from texts written in languages of European origin (Europhone) such as Afrikaans, Nigerian English, or hybridized languages with a European language as a base. Our declared aim of “investigating” their “texuality” emphasizes the craftsmanship [End Page ix] that is at stake: language is the clay in the writer’s workshop and its literary usage needs to be examined with appropriate tools. Accordingly, our approach is guided by the following main questions: What does writing do in a particular text and how does it do it? (See the title of Bazerman and Prior’s book). And in our context, how do the specificities of an African language shape a literary text? How do authors writing in an African language creatively explore the linguistic particularities of the language they write in? Our endeavor can be considered as a plea not only for a more balanced consideration of African languages and the literatures written in them, but also for a more language-centered approach to literature from Africa, generally speaking. Contrary to many prevalent forms of textual analysis of African literatures that tend to quickly step over language to dig for the “meaning” of the text, the contributions in this issue dive into texts and unearth their coming-into-being in and through language. The focus on language rather than on a primarily “referential reading” is reminiscent of Roland Barthes’s position: “what takes place in a narrative is from the referential . . . point of view literally nothing; ‘what happens’ is language alone . . . the unceasing celebration of its coming” (124). In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag pleads in a similar vein: “Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories” (10...

Afriphone Literature as a Prototypical form of African Literature: Insights from Prototype Theory

What is the most prototypical form of African literature? Shouldn’t we be using African languages to produce African literary texts, shouldn’t we produce more Afriphone African literature compared to Europhone African literature or Afro-Europhone literature? This issue underlies the reality that the vast majority of African writers presumably think in one language and express themselves (speak, enchant, or write) in another. This problematic, crystalized in major debates between Ngugi wa Thiongo and others, on the one hand, and Chinua Achebe and others, on the other hand, has resulted in great challenges as to how we can define or even conceptualize the discipline of African literature. Is it literature written by Africans in African languages for Africans or is it literature written by anybody including non-Africans in non-African languages? Or is it somewhere in-between these two extremes? The paper discusses several positions on this major question in African literature before advancing a novel proposal based on insights and evidence from proto-type theory within Linguistics and the Cognitive Sciences. This proposal leads to a somewhat provocative conclusion about the gradation of African literatures, where African language literatures or Afrophone literatures, comprise the core, proto-typical category in a 21 st Century African literature constellation, whereas foreign language and diasporic literatures such as Afro-European literatures , Afro-American literatures , and Afro-Chinese literatures are the hybrid and thus more recessive, peripheral types of African literature. Keywords: Afriphone literature, African language literature, African literature, proto-type theory, linguistics, cognitive Science

Oral literature and the evolving Jim-goes-to-town motif: Some early Northern Sotho compared to selected post-apartheid novels written in English

The continuation of the discourses of apartheid era African language literature characterised by the makgoweng motif in post-apartheid English literature written by black people has not been studied adequately. In this study I explored ways in which characters of Northern Sotho linguistic and cultural groups represented the same consciousness in both categories of novels across time. I used the qualitative method and analysed some Northern Sotho primary texts, written before democracy in South Africa, as well as selected post-apartheid English novels written by black people. I focused on the mokgoweng motif to examine the nature of continuity in theme and outlook. I found that the novels considered pointed to a sustainable consciousness, transcending linguistic boundaries and time. The social function of such characterisation representing the formerly oppressed black people, is a revelation of their quest towards selfdefinition in a modern world. The portrayed characters significantly point to resilience among black people to appropriate modernity by making sense of the world in a manner sustaining their distinctive outlook. In this way, the Northern Sotho-speaking cultural groups display a consistent consciousness enabling them to manage properly their adaptation to an evolving modern or globalising environment across time. The implication was that a comparison of South African English literature written by black people with indigenous language literature enriched the study of black South African English literature.

Away with Good Bantus: De-linking African language literature from culture, ‘tribe’ and propriety

This paper argues that the ‘institutionalisation' model used by universities to spearhead the intellectualisation of African languages is a non-starter for taking African languages in new creative directions. The major constraint for African language literary culture is that written output has historically been heavily bent towards conservative themes, in which cultural pride and propriety take centre stage: that is, a literature that speaks to ‘Good Bantus’. I argue that the literary tradition, particularly in schools and universities, has been marked largely by three characteristics: (i) the close linkage between ethnic identity and language; (ii) use of African language as cultural reclamation and pride; and (iii) narratological stagnation and lack of inventiveness in literary production. To bring life into African languages in the academy requires aesthetic inventiveness and transgression. For this to happen, literary regeneration ought to be at the heart of the African language intellectualisation project promoted by the academy.

Africa Antetranslation

The publication of African language literature is more firmly established in the 21st century than ever before. Yet as African language literature forges ahead, its translation lags behind. The greatness of African literature in European languages is inestimable, but how could African language literature, both in its original languages and in translation, be any less and not much more? Still, African language literature remains in a state of antetranslation—a small and not the main part, as it naturally could be, of African literature. Achebe’s “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” (1977) relates the incalculably adverse legacy of colonialism and neocolonialism, but its near universal assent might also reinforce the antetranslation status quo. Achebe scorns the “African woman who has obviously been some kind of mistress to Mr. Kurtz,” but what if she were invoked as a patron saint or nkisi n’kondi to move beyond antetranslation?

Literatures in African languages

For decades, African literary studies have been grounded in an epistemological distinction between Europhone literatures and Afrophone literatures. Each of these two poles was associated with a spe...

African unity, identity and development in some contemporary Igbo poems

Poetry is a literary genre that gives poets the opportunity to mirror the society, addressing socio-economic, political, religious and security issues. Over the years, the issues of African unity, identity and development have been of great concern to Africans. This explains why the Organisation of African Unity (OAU); which later metamorphosed into African Union (AU) was formed. Obviously, some Igbo poets like other members of the African society equally express their interest in contemporary issues in Africa through their poetic works. Although, many literary scholars have been done some researches on the Igbo poetry, but it is observed that some of their works have not addressed some contemporary issues in Africa extensively. It is against this backdrop that this study examines some contemporary Igbo poems that address contemporary issues bordering on African unity, identity and development in general and Nigeria in particular, so as to determine the extent to which the poets have addressed them. The study adopts the Marxist literary theory. The theory is employed to enhance the analysis of the selected poems. From the study, it is observed that the selected poems really address contemporary issues in Africa such as unity, identity and development by satirizing, criticizing, correcting and admonishing Africans. Therefore, the paper recommends that the teaching and learning of literature especially African literature in African languages is indispensable and should be encouraged. This will no doubt, awaken the reading culture and interest in the society at large.

The present state of Children's Literature in Indigenous African Languages: The Igbo Example

This work tries to explore the state of children’s indigenous literature at both nursery and lower primary levels of education in Igbo speech community of Eastern Nigeria. As a result of the perceived decline in proficiency in both oral and written forms of the language among the younger generation of ‘Ndigbo’ and which has given rise to obvious fear of the language degenerating to a state of endangerment, some committed individuals and groups have organized and are still organizing significant language crusade against the prevalent negative language attitude of ‘Ndigbo’ towards their language. This effort, it is hoped, will engender the infusion of the spirit of revitalization and rebirth and the eventual language pride into the owners of Igbo language. It is a well known fact that Children’s literature provides opportunity of response, appreciation and internalization of one’s cultural heritage as well as the nurture, growth and development of the children’s self perception and language skills which result to the internal urge of transferring same to posterity. In view of these, this study explores the extent the language crusade at present going on in Igbo society has really actualized the targeted goals, and inquires whether the crusaders also have early childhood education (nursery and lower primary) in mind as part of their targets. This study will equally examine the current state of the indigenous children’s literature: prose, poetry, drama, including nursery rhymes at this crucial formation stage in relation with the existing school curriculum. With the fact that early exposure of children to indigenous literature is one of the major measures of revitalizing and stabilizing languages, this research will premise its search on Fishman’s theoretical framework for language revitalization and shift. Based on the findings, some recommendations will be made and some relevant revitalization techniques also be suggested.

African-language literatures and the ‘transnational turn’ in Euro-American humanities

This article relates the recent ‘transnational turn’ in Euro-American humanities to African literary criticism – and African-language literatures in particular. While some African intellectuals embraced the new globalist way of analysing literature, there is a strong resistance in African studies against it, as African intellectuals often work with a set of intellectual priorities and philosophical premises that are very different from those who inspired transnational criticism. The article argues, in particular, that world literature theories, just like postcolonial studies before them, perpetuate a vision of African-language literatures as locally constrained, peripheral, and pre-modern. Contrary to this vision, the article claims for African literature a right to disconnectivity on the one hand, and on the other calls for the construction of new epistemological connectivities between Afrophone and Europhone, oral and written literatures. At the same time, though, the transnational turn in the humanities offers some important insights into how to overcome the influence, in African literary criticism, of rigid forms of nativism and nationalism (including linguistic nativism and linguistic nationalism). Following these observations, the article proposes a study of African literature based on the idea of intersecting and multi-layered literary systems, some existing in relative autonomy, some interacting with each other across regions or within the same sociocultural space.