Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
12 - The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 Africa and orality
- 2 The folktale and its extensions
- 3 Festivals, ritual, and drama in Africa
- 4 Arab and Berber oral traditions in North Africa
- 5 Heroic and praise poetry in South Africa
- 6 African oral epics
- 7 The oral tradition in the African diaspora
- 8 Carnival and the folk origins of West Indian drama
- 9 Africa and writing
- 10 Ethiopian literature
- 11 African literature in Arabic
- 12 The Swahili literary tradition: an intercultural heritage
- 13 Africa and the European Renaissance
- 14 The literature of slavery and abolition
- 15 Discourses of empire
- 16 African-language literatures of southern Africa
- 17 Gikuyu literature: development from early Christian writings to Ngũgĩ’s later novels
- 18 The emergence of written Hausa literature
- 19 Literature in Yorùbá: poetry and prose; traveling theater and modern drama
- 20 African literature and the colonial factor
- 21 The formative journals and institutions
- 22 Literature in Afrikaans
- References
Summary
Swahili literature, broadly defined as that body of verbal art originally composed in the Swahili language, is a product of what Ali Mazrui (1986) has termed Africa’s triple heritage. It emerged out of a confluence of three forces: the indigenous tradition, the Islamic legacy, and the western impact. The indigenous contribution has, of course, featured primarily in the realm of orature; but, over the years, it has continued to affect the destiny of Swahili written literature that is the focus of this chapter. One must also bear in mind that the boundary between what is written and what is oral in the various genres of Swahili literature is not always easy to determine.
With regard to the interaction between the Arab-Islamic and indigenous factors, in particular, the general tendency, until relatively recently, was to privilege the former (usually seen as the “donor”) over the latter (regarded as the “recipient”) to a point where it has supposedly lost its local identity. But as Rajmund Ohly observes, “The overlapping of these two cultures – the local, Bantu and the Oriental – took place on the basis of mutual adjustment and not, as has been thought until now, on the basis of assimilation, so that a two tiered development of literature can be observed which embraces both the pure elements of Bantu folk culture and the inflowing Muslim-Oriental elements” (1985: 461). In fact, the so-called layers became integrated into a new organic synthesis and, in time, fused with other influences reflecting, among others things, the tensions between town and country, and between “gentry” and “commoner.”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature , pp. 199 - 226Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
References
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