Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 23 East African literature in English
- 24 Anglophone literature of Central Africa
- 25 West African literature in English: beginnings to the mid-seventies
- 26 South African literature in English
- 27 African literature in French: sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period
- 28 North African literature in French
- 29 Francophone literatures of the Indian Ocean
- 30 African literature in Spanish
- 31 African literature in Portuguese
- 32 Popular literature in Africa
- 33 Caribbean literature in French: origins and development
- 34 Caribbean literature in Spanish
- 35 Anglophone Caribbean literature
- 36 The Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude movement
- 37 Postcolonial Caribbean identities
- 38 African literature and post-independence disillusionment
- 39 “Postcolonial” African and Caribbean literature
- 40 Modernism and Postmodernism in African literature
- Index
- References
31 - African literature in Portuguese
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 23 East African literature in English
- 24 Anglophone literature of Central Africa
- 25 West African literature in English: beginnings to the mid-seventies
- 26 South African literature in English
- 27 African literature in French: sub-Saharan Africa during the colonial period
- 28 North African literature in French
- 29 Francophone literatures of the Indian Ocean
- 30 African literature in Spanish
- 31 African literature in Portuguese
- 32 Popular literature in Africa
- 33 Caribbean literature in French: origins and development
- 34 Caribbean literature in Spanish
- 35 Anglophone Caribbean literature
- 36 The Harlem Renaissance and the Negritude movement
- 37 Postcolonial Caribbean identities
- 38 African literature and post-independence disillusionment
- 39 “Postcolonial” African and Caribbean literature
- 40 Modernism and Postmodernism in African literature
- Index
- References
Summary
Portuguese was the first European language to reach sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, by the middle of the fifteenth century many Africans spoke Portuguese-based pidgins and creoles. As a consequence of this early presence, African writing in Portuguese appeared before anything comparable in English, French, and other European languages.
Literary precursors in the colonial period
With a few exceptions, documented as far back as the nineteenth century, precursors of a representative lusophone African literature did not come into being until the 1930s and 1940s. Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta (1857–94) perhaps stands as Angolan literature’s most important nineteenth-century precursor. A native of Icolo-e-Bengo, Cordeiro da Matta was a poet, the author of an unpublished novel, and the organizer of a Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary.
António de Assis Júnior (1887–1960), a later precursor, was an “assimilated” African, according to the colonial Indigenous Law enacted by the Portuguese New State in the early twentieth century. In spite of his official social status of assimilado, Assis Júnior was transcultural, and he paid tribute to his Kimbundu ethnic origins. Like his predecessor Cordeiro da Matta, he compiled a Kimbundu–Portuguese dictionary. He established himself as a direct precursor of modern Angolan literature with O segredo da morta (1934) (The Dead Woman’s Secret), subtitled Romance de costumes angolenses (A Romance of Angolan Customs). Although written in the style of Victor Hugo, Assis Júnior’s early romance is a forerunner of the ethnographic Angolan prose fiction of the 1950s and 1960s.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature , pp. 603 - 625Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000