Prof. Richard F. Johnson
Lit 208: Orality and Performance Tradition in African Literature

This course might also be called "Tradition and Continuity in African Literature." The rationale of the course is that contemporary written literature in Africa continues to derive a great deal of its vitality from older traditions of verbal art. The first two weeks of the course will be devoted to an examination of sample texts from the oral tradition. The rest of the readings will focus on representative texts by major African writers whose work has made use of oral tradition.

Class discussions will draw attention to thematic issues and to the social and political contexts in which the various texts are situated. The principal concern of the course, however, will be the aesthetic implications of the transposition of oral techniques and structural features into the medium of the written/printed word. Video and audio recordings will be used for illustration whenever possible.

Reading List may include:

• John Johnson, The Epic of Son-Jara (Indiana UP, 1986)
• Thomas Hale, Scribe, Griot, and Novelist: Narrative Interpreters of the Songhay Empire (U of Florida Press, 1990)
• John Johnson, Thomas Hale and Stephen Belcher, eds., Oral Epics from Africa: Vibrant Voices from a Vast Continent (Indiana UP, 1997)
• Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Matigari
• Ayi Kwei Armah, Two Thousand Seasons
• Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter
• Okot p'Bitek, Song of a Prisoner

Secondary Readings may include selections from:

• Ruth Finnegan, Oral Literature in Africa
• Richard Bauman, Verbal Art as Performance
• Isidore Okpewho, African Oral Literature: Backgrounds, Character, and Continuity
• Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
• Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tifflin, eds., The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures
• Warren d'Azevedo, ed., The Traditonal Artist in African Societies
• Gerald Moore, Twelve African Writers
• Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology
• Jack Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral
• Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History
• Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: Technologizing the Word