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Towards Realism in French African Writing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Gerald Moore
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Extract

‘Blackness is not absence, but refusal’ said Aimé Césaire. The only trouble with refusal as a literary posture is that it is inclined to produce writing which is concerned with public gesture rather than with private and particular observation. Until recently, the great bulk of French writing by Africans could be fairly labelled as romantic, rhetorical, and directed at general rather than individual situations. That is to say, there was a preference for romantically revolutionary statements about ‘the situation of the negro’, rather than exploratory statements about the situation of the individual writer at a particular moment in space and time.

Type
Original Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , March 1963 , pp. 61 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1963

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References

page 61 note 1 Hosties noires (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1948).Google Scholar

page 62 note 1 Coups de pilon (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1956).Google Scholar

page 62 note 2 Ibid.

page 63 note 1 Leurres et lueurs (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1960).Google Scholar

page 64 note 1 Black Orpheus, I (Ibadan, 1957).Google Scholar

page 65 note 1 Clark, John Pepper, Poems (Ibadan, Mbari, 1962).Google Scholar

page 65 note 2 The Times Literary Supplement, 10 Aug. 1962.

page 66 note 1 Orphée noir (Paris, Presses Universitaires, 1948).Google Scholar

page 66 note 2 ‘Les Mamelles’, from Les Contes d'Amadou Koumba (Paris, Présence Africaine, 1947).Google Scholar

page 67 note 1 Laye, Camara, The Dark Child (London, Collins, 1955).Google Scholar

page 68 note 1 Oyono, Ferdinand, Le Vieux Nègre et la médaille (Paris, Julliard, 1956).Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 Oyono, Ferdinand, Chemin d'Europe (Paris, Julliard, 1960).Google Scholar

page 70 note 1 Beti, Mongo, Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba (Paris, Laffont, 1956).Google Scholar

page 73 note 1 Kane, Cheikh Hamidou, L'Aventure ambiguë (Paris, Julliard, 1962).Google Scholar