MODULE: SURVEY OF AFRO-ASIAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER 1:
Introduction to Afro-Asian Literature

Objectives:

Provide an overview and definition of Afro-Asian Literatures

Discuss the brief history of Afro-Asian countries
Recognize the outstanding characteristics of the literary authors.

Lesson 1: Overview

Literature is a body of written/oral works, especially those

considered of superior or lasting artistic merit. Afro-Asian
Literature is any written text such as poems, short stories, or
novels that are based on African Asian ethnicity or African Arab
ethnicity. It mirrors not only the customs and traditions of African
and Asian countries but also their philosophy of life, which on the
whole are deeply and predominantly contemplative and hauntingly
sweet.

Afro-Asian Literature is the reflection of the storm and the stress of

developing nations seeking a place under the sun which every student must
understand so he may know how this literature affects the history and culture of a
nation.
It can also be used to describe literature which depicts the relationship between African
and Asian characters. The two continents are often linked together as areas of study,
because they both preserve and honor long cultures and traditions.

Despite the deeply historically-rooted

relationship between the two communities, there
is a lack of research and study about their
relationship and the people who share both
heritages. Furthermore, there has been
underlying tension between the two racial groups
throughout history that persists today.

In a simpler thought, Afro-Asian literature refers

to the literary output of the various countries
and cultures in Africa and Asia. This includes
their oral traditions and from the first to the
contemporary written and/or published prose and
poetry.

1
 Lesson 2: History of Afro-Asian Literature

Philippine Literature is literature associated with

the Philippines from prehistory, through its colonial
legacies, and on to the present. Pre-Hispanic
Philippine literature was actually epics passed on
from generation to generation, originally through an
oral tradition.

Philippine is a country rich in diversity and

language heritage. Even before Spanish
colonization, its
literature had evolved tremendously. Some of the notable literatures are a general
reflection of the influence exerted by Spaniards during the colonization of Philippine.
During pre-colonial times, there has been widespread evidence that the island
inhabitants display a culture rich with traditions and considered the longest in the
country’s history. Literature in this period is based on tradition, reflecting daily life
activities such as housework, farming, fishing, hunting, and taking care of the children
as well. Folk speeches, folk songs and indigenous rituals are part of their daily lives.
The infusion of such elements represents a lifestyle deeply ingrained in the locals. Oral
pieces told stories which explained heroes and their adventure. They attempted to
explain certain natural phenomena and at the same time served as entertainment
purposes. Philippine literature history represented the ethos of the people before the
arrival of a huge cultural influence.

José Garcia Villa (August 5, 1908 – February 7, 1997)

was a Filipino poet, literary critic, short story writer, and
painter. He was awarded as the National Artist of the
Philippines title for literature in 1973. As well as the
Guggenheim Fellowship in creative writing by Conrad
Aiken. He is known to have introduced the "reversed
consonance rhyme scheme" in writing poetry, as well as the
extensive use of punctuation marks—especially commas,
which made him known as the Comma Poet. He used the
pen
name Doveglion (derived from "Dove, Eagle, Lion"); based on the characters he
derived from his own works. These animals were also explored by another poet, E. E.
Cummings, in "Doveglion, Adventures in Value", a poem dedicated to Villa.

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African Literature is the literary works
from African continent and includes oral
literature or "orature", in the term coined
by Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu.
African literature consists of a body of work in
different languages and various genres,
ranging from oral literature to literature written
in colonial languages (French, Portuguese,
and English).
Oral literature, including stories, dramas,
riddles, histories, myths, songs, proverbs, and
other expressions, is frequently employed to educate and entertain children. Oral
histories, myths, and proverbs additionally serve to remind whole communities of their
ancestors' heroic deeds, their past, and the precedents for their customs and traditions.
Essential to oral literature is a concern for presentation and oratory. Folktale tellers use
call-response techniques. A griot (praise singer) will accompany a narrative with music.

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka (born on July 13,

1934), known as Wole Soyinka is
a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was
awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature the first sub-
Saharan African to be honored in that category.

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Japanese Literature is one of the major literatures

of the world, comparable to English literature in age
and variety. From the seventh century C.E., when the
earliest surviving works were written, until the present
day, there has never been a period when literature was
not being produced in Japan. Possibly the earliest full-
length novel, The Tale of Genji was written in Japan in
the early eleventh century. In addition to novels,
poetry, and drama, other genres such as travelogues,
personal diaries and collections of random thoughts
and impressions, are prominent in Japanese literature.
In addition to works in the Japanese language,
Japanese writers produced a large body of writing in
classical Chinese.
 Japanese literature traces its beginnings to oral traditions that were first recorded
in written form in the early eighth century after a writing system was introduced from
China. The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon shoki (Chronicle of Japan)
were completed in 712 and 720, respectively, as government projects. The former is an
anthology of myths, legends, and other stories, while the latter is a chronological record
of history. The Fudoki (Records of Wind and Earth), compiled by provincial officials
beginning in 713, describe the history, geography, products, and folklore of the various
provinces. The most brilliant literary product of this period was the Man'yoshu
(Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves), an anthology of 4,500 poems composed by
people ranging from unknown commoners to emperors and compiled around 759.
Already emerging was a verse form comprising 31 syllables (5-7-5-7-7) known as
tanka. In 905 the Kokin wakashu or Kokinshu (Collection of Poems from Ancient and
Modern Times) was published as the first poetry anthology commissioned by an
emperor; its preface paid high tribute to the vast possibilities of literature.

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1 March 1892 – 24 July 1927) was

a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is
regarded as the "Father of the Japanese short story" and
Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize is
named after him. He died by suicide at the age of 35 through
an overdose of barbital.

Akutagawa's stories were influenced by his belief that

the practice of literature should be universal and can bring
together western and Japanese cultures.

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Early Korean Literature was heavily influenced by Shamanism, Buddhism and

Confucianism. The early literature, which began as an oral tradition, depicted a love of
nature and man and held that man was a part of
nature. Good was rewarded and evil was
punished and values like loyalty to the King,
filial piety, respect for one's elders, true
friendship and chastity were emphasized.
Some of the earliest Korean writings were
poems called hyangga, written during the
Shilla Kingdom using the script type Idu
partially adapted from Chinese characters
phonetically and only 25 remain. During the
Koryo period, Korean literature of the upper
class, mostly written in
classical Chinese, and characterized by an emphasis on philosophic expositions on the
Chinese classics, an art that was essential for government service, the only respectable
avenue to success outside of teaching.
Also during this period, hanshi, poems in Chinese characters, developed to
maturity, and toward the end of the dynasty, a new form of poetry called shijo gained
wide
acceptance. The shijo, a short three-
line poem written in Han-gul (the
Korean alphabet), remained popular
throughout the Choson Dynasty, as did
the later kasa, a new vernacular verse
genre which was more descriptive and
expository. The Choson period also saw
a great outpouring of literature written in
Han-gul which often centered on the
concept that all men are equal and
attacked social inequality, spurred by
the introduction of Sirhak (Practical
Learning) in the 17th century.

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Indonesian Literature is a term grouping various genres of South-East Asian literature

and it can refer to literature produced in the Indonesian archipelago. It also used to refer
more broadly to literature produced in areas with common language roots based on the
Malay language. The poetry and prose writings in Javanese, Malay, Sundanese, and
other languages of the peoples of Indonesia. They include works orally transmitted and
then preserved in written form by the Indonesian peoples, oral literature, and the
modern literatures that began to emerge in the early 20th century because of Western
influence. Many of the Indonesian songs, or poems, that were orally transmitted by
professional priest-singers embody traditions that have
a religious function.

Indonesian orally transmitted prose forms

are highly varied and include myths,
animal stories and “beast fables,”
fairy tales, legends, puzzles and
riddles, and anecdotes and adventure
stories. The divine heroes and epic
animals of these tales show the influence
of Indian
literature and the written literatures of other neighboring cultures.

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Indian Literature produced on the Indian

subcontinent until 1947 and in the Republic of India
thereafter. The Republic of India has 22 officially
recognized languages. The earliest works of Indian
literature were orally transmitted. Indian
literature Sanskrit literature divides into three
periods: the Vedic period includes the Vedas and
the Upanishads; the Epic period includes
the Mahabharata, the Bhagavad Gita, and
the Ramayana; and the Classical period includes
the lyrics of Kalidasa. During the 19th century, various regional vernacular literatures
emerged. Bengali literature was particularly influential in the development of a
nationalist literature, including writers such as Rabindranath Tagore.

Khushwant Singh, one of the best-known

Indian writers of all times, was born in 1915 in
Hadali (now in Pakistan).
Khushwant Singh's name is bound to go
down in Indian literary history as one of the finest
historians and novelists, a forthright political
commentator, and an outstanding observer and
social critic. In July 2000, he was conferred the
"Honest Man of the Year Award" by the Sulabh
International Social Service Organization for his courage and honesty in his "brilliant
incisive writing."

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Malaysian Literature is the collection of literary works produced in the Malay Peninsula
until 1963 and in Malaysia. Thereafter oral literature encompasses a variety of genres
of Malay folklore, such as myths, legends, folk tales, romances, epics, poetry, proverbs,
origin stories and oral histories. Malaysian literature is typically written in any of the
country's four main languages: Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil. It portrays various
aspects of Malaysian life and comprises an important part of the culture of Malaysia.

One of Malaysia's top writer is Shahnon Ahmad. He has held

the position of Malaysia's literary laureate since 1982. In 1999,
he caused a stir when he wrote a book called Shit that was
highly critical of the Mahathir government. Shit ended up being
one of the best selling books ever in Malaysia. The Hindu
stratum is represented by localized versions of the originally
Indian epic, Ramayana. Originally, it was known in the
Sultanate of Malacca in a Javanese version, but later, during the
Islamic period, it was rewritten as Hikayat Seri Rama, in which
the main heroes are Muslims.

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Thailand Literature was heavily influenced by the Indian

culture and Buddhist-Hindu ideology since the time it first
appeared in the 13th century. Thailand's national epic is a
version of the Ramayana called the Ramakien, the basis
of Thailand's music and art translated from Sanskrit and
rearranged into Siamese verses. Although the Thai
version is one fourth longer than the Hindu original, the
basic theme stays the same. King Rama I’s Ramakien is
the major historical source of medieval Thai courtly
traditions. King Rama II composed two episodes of the
Ramakien for classical drama purposed and wrote several
other epic poems, including the Inao, a romance with a
Javanese background. The Inao is a treasure trove of
historical
information on early 19th-century Thai customs, habits, and manners and figures
prominently in the repertoire of classical drama.

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Chinese Literature is one of the major literary heritages
of the world, with an uninterrupted history of more than
3,000 years, dating back at least to the 14th century
BCE. Its medium, the Chinese language, has retained
its unmistakable identity in both its spoken and written
aspects in spite of generally gradual changes in
pronunciation, the existence of regional and
local dialects, and several stages in the structural
representation of the written graphs, or “characters.”
Even the partial or total conquests of China for
considerable periods by non-Han Chinese ethnic groups
from outside the Great Wall failed to disrupt
this continuity. The conquerors were forced to adopt the
written Chinese language as their official medium of communication because they had
none of their own. Since the Chinese graphs were inherently no phonetic, they were at
best unsatisfactory tools for the transcription of a non-Chinese language, and attempts
at creating a new alphabetic-phonetic written language for empire building proved
unsuccessful on three separate occasions. The result was that after a period of alien
domination, the conquerors were culturally assimilated (except the Mongols, who
retreated end masse to their original homeland after the collapse of the Yuan (or
Mongol dynasty in 1368). Thus, there was no disruption in China’s literary development.

Lu Xun (or Lu Hsun 1881-1936) is a Chinese writer,

essayist, poet, and literary critic. Writing in Vernacular
Chinese and Classical Chinese, he was a short story
writer, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, poet, and
designer. He has been considered, China's greatest
modern writer for most of the 20th century. Many of
the other authors of fictional works of social criticism
popular during the 1920s and 1930s have been at least
partially discredited or criticized during the various
political movements in China since 1949, but Lu Xun's
reputation has remained consistently distinguished. Mao
Zedong called him "commander of China's cultural
revolution."

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Vietnam Literature is produced by Vietnamese-
speaking people, primarily in Vietnam. The
oral poetry tradition is purely native. Older even
than the linguistic separation of the Muong and
Vietnamese languages 1,000 years ago, the oral
poetry tradition probably has its origins in the
agrarian prayers common to the prehistory of
the Mon-Khmer language family. The oral poetry,
still sung today in the countryside, remains a strong
influence in contemporary poetry and fiction writing.
Chinese influence on the written literature of Vietnam is nearly as old as its conquest of
the country in the 2nd century BC. For nearly 2,000 years after that, most Vietnamese
writing was in Chinese ideograms. In other words, to express themselves in writing, the
Vietnamese had to use a writing system that represented their ideas but not their
speech. In the earliest centuries of the independent Vietnamese nation, a great deal of
the literature was produced by Buddhist monks of the Thien school (a prior form of what
is better known as Zen), which had reached Vietnam as early as the 2nd century by
means of Indian monks traveling to China. In the 10th and 11th centuries a collection of
Buddhist biographies and verse pronouncements entitled Thien uyen tap anh (literally
“Flowers of the Garden of Thien,” more prosaically “Outstanding Figures in the Zen
Community”) included works by famous monks such as Van Hanh, Man Giac, Vien
Chieu, Vien Thong, Khong Lo, and others.

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Ancient Egyptian Literature comprises

a wide array of narrative and poetic forms
including inscriptions on tombs, stele, obelisks,
and temples; myths, stories, and legends;
religious writings; philosophical works;
autobiographies; biographies; histories; poetry;
hymns; personal essays; letters and court
records. The first examples of Egyptian
writing come from the Early Dynastic Period in
the form of Offering Lists and autobiographies;
the autobiography was carved on one's tomb along with the Offering List to let the
living know what gifts, and in what quantity, the deceased was due regularly in
visiting
the grave. These texts were written in hieroglyphics ("sacred carvings")
a writing system combining phonograms (symbols which represent sound),
logograms (symbols representing words), and ideograms (symbols which represent
meaning or sense). Hieroglyphic writing was extremely labor intensive and so
another script grew up beside it known as hieratic ("sacred writings") which was faster
to work with and easier to use.

Most of Egyptian literature was written in hieroglyphics or hieratic script;

hieroglyphics were used on monuments such as tombs, obelisks, stele, and temples
while hieratic script was used in writing on papyrus scrolls and ceramic pots. Although
hieratic, and later demotic and Coptic, scripts became the common writing system of the
educated and literate, hieroglyphics remained in use throughout Egypt's history for
monumental structures until it was forgotten during the early Christian period.

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Arabian Literature is a written Arabic

literature began to be known with the collect of
Koran, the sacred book of Islam, in Arabia in
17th century A.D. with the spread of the Islamic
faith into Asia, Africa and Europe,
the Arabian language soon became a major
world language.

The tradition of Arabic literature

stretches back some 16 centuries to
unrecorded
beginnings in the Arabian Peninsula. At certain points in the development of European
civilization, the literary culture of Islam and its Arabic medium of expression came to be
regarded not only as models for emulation but also, through vital conduits. Moorish
Spain and Norman Sicily, as direct sources of inspiration for
the intellectual communities of Europe. There is perhaps no other literature so closely
allied to the history of its people as is that of the Arabs. Arabic literature emerged in the
sixth century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. It was
the Qur'an (Koran) in the seventh century, which would have the greatest lasting
effect on Arabic culture and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the
Islamic Golden Age and continues to the present day. The most essential point about
Arabic literature is that it stems directly from the Holy Qur’an—pre-Islamic poetry
notwithstanding. Apart from some 1st century AD graffiti (which hardly counts as
literature), we have no evidence of writings in Arabic before the time of the Prophet
Muhammad. Illiteracy was widespread and the select few who could read or write
learned these arts from teachers outside Arabia. This was, however, no bar to a
fundamental appreciation of poetry among the Bedouin nomads. Many individual tribes
preserved an oral tradition by the use of rawis, who earned a living purely by
memorizing and reciting poetry.

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Israeli Literature is literature written in the State of

Israel by Israelis. Most works classed as Israeli
literature are written in the Hebrew language,
although some Israeli authors write in Yiddish, English,
Arabic and Russian. Today, at the beginning of the
21st century, Israeli literature written in the Hebrew
language is extraordinarily rich and varied, although
Israel is a small country and Hebrew is spoken by
relatively few people. Some contemporary Israeli
writers, such as the poet Yehudah Amichai and the
novelists Amos Oz, A. B. Yehoshua, David Grossman, and Aharon Appelfeld are well
known and highly respected internationally. Women writers such as Savyon Liebrecht,
Orly Castel-Blum, and Ronit Matalon have also been recognized abroad. However, the
few writers whose works are widely known in translation provide just a small indication
of the intense literary activity that characterizes Israel. The origins of modern Israeli
literature lie in the Hebrew literature written in Eastern Europe during the 19th century.
Interestingly, poetry, and not prose, was the dominant medium in Hebrew literature until
the mid-20th century. Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) published his first volume
of poetry in 1901 and came to be recognized as the preeminent voice in Hebrew
poetry. Bialik was raised in Czarist Russia and received a traditional Jewish education.
He wrote personal lyrical poetry as well as poetry on Jewish national themes. He also
founded an influential Hebrew publishing house and was active in Zionist affairs. He
moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1924 and his presence there was influential in moving
the center of Hebrew literature from Europe.

For More Knowledge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_literature
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https://vietlongtravel.com/news/thailand-facts/thailand-literature
https://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Literature/
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Arabic_literature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Garc%C3%ADa_Villa

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO AFRO-ASIAN LITERATURE Afro-asian literature refers to the

literary output of the various countries and cultures in Africa and Asia. This includes their oral traditions
and from the first to the contemporary written and/or published prose and poetry. Afro-Asian Literature
mirrors not only the customs and traditions of African and Asian countries but also their philosophy of life
which on the whole are deeply and predominantly contemplative and hauntingly sweet.

https://youtu.be/0J-Otcb-DE0
https://youtu.be/9HpKmxc7nhI