Le roman africain de 1950 à nos jours / The Francophone African Novel from 1950 to Today

This course is meant for MA and PhD students who would like to discover African literature, or expand their knowledge of it. We will examine the variations of the African novel (in both style and themes) throughout the past fifty years, and draw an outline of the different literary generations according to the historical events that affected the continent. The student will be presented with a short but salient overview of African literature and will become acquainted with the codes that will allow him/her to explore more deeply a literature in full emergence. After a short introduction on the oral sources and the influences of the 19th century naturalist novel, we will define the three major phases of the African novel (colonization, independence, migration), and study at length one representative novel of each.

Texts: Ferdinand Oyono, Le vieux nègre et la médaille (Collection 10/18, Paris); Ahmadou Kourouma, Les soleils des Indépendances (Editions du Seuil, Paris); Fatou Diom, Le ventre de l’Atlantique (Editions Anne Carrière, Paris).