African literatures

Postcolonial Literatures in English have become a central field of research and study all over the world. This series of introductory readers covers (1) South Asian Literatures, (2) Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Literatures, (3) African Literatures, (4) Canadian Literatures, (5) Caribbean Literatures and (6) Black and Asian British Literatures. The edited collections of source materials are designed to help students and teachers in exploring the diversity of the global cultural networks which have arisen from the British Empire and Commonwealth. Each volume contains an introduction that sketches out major trends and developments in the region and provides recommendations for further reading. The specificities of each respective region are explored within a framework focussing on histories, identities, language, education, movements and genres, as well as transcultural perspectives. Ever since the late 19th century European “Scramble for Africa”, English has been an important constituent of Africa’s cultural and intellectual make-up. What had once been introduced as the colonizer’s tongue became a language of anticolonial liberation and remains a medium employed by Anglophone writers from West, East and Southern Africa to engage not only with Africa’s colonial past, but also with the social, political and cultural complexities and contradictions of its post-independence present. The third volume in the series “Postcolonial Literatures in English: Sources and Resources” seeks to provide an introduction to the English-language literatures of Africa through a collection of texts selected for the contribution they make to the contextualisation of these literatures. It covers the history of the English language on the African continent, the use of the language by African writers, the oral tradition, the impact of missionary education on Africans, the issues of identity which have informed their writing, the debates which have accompanied the emergence of African literature in English and the current state of African literary practice including its transnational and transcultural dimensions.