The Eloquence of the Scribes
Product Description
by Ayi Kwei Armah
This memoir on the ancient sources and future resources of African literature, gives colonial Africanist preconceptions of Africa’s literary heritage a clean burial. Citing new evidence on oral and written traditions, it shows that Africa’s old oral culture, antedating the pyramids, was the matrix from which emerged the hieroglyphic literature and ancient Egypt. Armah argues that traditions of ancient Egypt and feudal Africa, sharing numerous myths, narratives, symbols and words, constitute an ancestral treasury of concepts and images, a profound source of artistic inspiration and organizational ideas for writers and intellectuals ready to work an African future.
Paperback: 351 pages
This memoir on the ancient sources and future resources of African literature, gives colonial Africanist preconceptions of Africa’s literary heritage a clean burial. Citing new evidence on oral and written traditions, it shows that Africa’s old oral culture, antedating the pyramids, was the matrix from which emerged the hieroglyphic literature and ancient Egypt. Armah argues that traditions of ancient Egypt and feudal Africa, sharing numerous myths, narratives, symbols and words, constitute an ancestral treasury of concepts and images, a profound source of artistic inspiration and organizational ideas for writers and intellectuals ready to work an African future.
Paperback: 351 pages
