Date: 24th January 2012 Student number: 200901609 Initials: H.

Letsie Course code: E303 Assignment: Characteristics of the African Novel

The African novel is a creation that was formulated when the Europeans came to Africa and taught their African colonies how to write and read through the bible and Christianity. It reflects the African way of storytelling by having the concept of orality (or orature), which serves as the theoretical and ethnographic foundation of the intrinsic properties: character types, narratives functions and rhetoric devices even metaphor and symbolism, by which the native narratives are structured. So it is precise to put the emergence of the African novel with colonisation, as Irele (2009) puts it:
Its privileged status as written genre maybe attributed as European influence and it association with modernity. However there can be no doubt that the appeal of the novel has to do with the integrative function that narratives have always played in African societies; a role that is well illustrated not only by didactic and reflexive purpose of folk tales and fables that inform the sensibility and define a primary level of the imaginative faculty in traditional African societies, but also by the centrality of the mythical tales extending to the great oral epics (Irele, 2009:01)

The African novel was also created to correct the fallacies and conclusions first written by the European colonisers. The Europeans view of Africans was distorted by their racist view of African culture since they believed that their culture of Christianity was higher than the heathen beliefs of the Africans. to judge African culture by European aesthetic and formalist standards which claim to be universal but fail to respect the role of African oral tradition in the development of the modern African Literature.(http://www.h-net.org/reviews/show/pdf.) Some of the attribute of African orature is that they consisted of folklore, proverbs and fables; and they still appear in the novel. In his novel Arrow of God, Achebe uses his know how of the traditional verbal texts especially narratives and proverbs. He uses the oral Igbo style of narratives, proverbs and customs. Bernth linfords (1976). And as for folklore, Azakiel Sekese employs it in his satirical story of The Meeting of the Birds; it is a story that is based on his know how on the Sesotho judicial system in the native courts. It is a story that tells about how other birds called a Pitso (tribal assembly) against the hawks geed, cruelty and injustices to the vulture.

Themes in the African novel during the colonial times became political advocacies inside fiction. Hence, a lot of themes in the family of African novels include: racism, colonialism, apartheid in South African prose, inequality of the blacks and whites and class struggles. Writer like Ousmane Sembene, Chinua Achebe, Zakes Mda and many others wrote their novel pieces as a form of protests against their current living conditions in their countries. Today themes found in the African novel are about female genitalia mutilation, rape, divorce and respect of culture or lack thereof. In conclusion, the African novel began as a form of protest either against colonial or anarchical, it was a silent way of speaking ones views or using folktale form to tell a story was a way of complaining without singling out the authority figure. Also the African novel changes with time and society, it subject matter and structure change because of the influences that are there during its composition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
F.Abiola Irele.2009.Introduction: Perspectives on the African novel

(http://asserts_cambridge.org/9705218/55600/excerpt/9780521855600_excerpt.pdf).24/01/2012 http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php Bernth Lindfords.1976. Research in African Literatures. University of Texas Press; Austin Texas. Vol7, no1.