West African Poetry: A Critical HistoryPrevious studies of African poetry have tended to concentrate either on its political content or on its relationship to various European schools. This book examines West African poetry in English and French against the background of oral poetry in the vernacular. Do the roots of such poetry lie in Africa or in Europe? In committing their work to writing, do poets lose more than they gain? Can the immediacy of oral performance ever be recovered? Robert Fraser's account of two centuries of West African verse examines its subjugation to a succession of international styles: from the heroic couplet to the austerity of experimental Modernism. Successive chapters take us through the Négritude movement and the emergence of anglophone free verse in the 1950s to the rediscovery in recent years of the neglected springs of orality, which is the subject of the concluding chapter. |
Contents
From oral to written verse development or depletion? | 7 |
Ladies and gentlemen | 20 |
The negritude movement | 42 |
Poetry and the university 195763 | 73 |
The achievement of Christopher Okigbo | 104 |
Continuity and adaptation in Ghanaian verse 195271 | 138 |
Two Ijo poets | 168 |
Psalmody of sunsets the career of Lenrie Peters | 200 |
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Abiku Accra Akpalu Anlo Anozie anthology appeared Armattoe artist attempt Black Orpheus Book of Modern chapter Christopher Okigbo context critic cultural Dakar dance death Decade of Tongues Diop dirge Domegbe dream drum earlier early Eliot English feeling francophone French Gabriel Okara Ghana Ghanaian goddess Heavensgate Heinemann Horn human Ibadan Ibid Idanre Igbo John Pepper Clark Kofi Anyidoho Kofi Awoonor Labyrinths lament language later Lenrie Peters Léopold Sédar Senghor less lines literary literature London lyric mind Modern African Poetry négritude Nigerian night Ogun Okai's Okara oral Paris Path of Thunder period Peters Peters's phrase pieces poem's poème Poems of Black poet poet's poetic political Press published reader rhythm seems seen Selected Senegal sense sequence Silences sing song sort stanza theme tradition turn Ulli Beier University vision voice volume West African poetry West African Verse Wheta Wole Soyinka words writers written Yoruba