Academic literature on the topic 'Congolese literature (French)'

This article explores the Congolese remembering of the experienced colonial violence through the medium of literature. Although criticism of colonialism is not a favourite topic of Congolese writers, there exists an important corpus of texts, especially when the literary production of Congo Kinshasa and Congo Brazzaville with their politically distinct though sometimes similar experiences is taken into account. Three main strategies of writing about the topic can be distinguished: a documentary mode, an allegorical mode and a fragmented mode, which often appear in combination. Intertextuality with the colonial archive as well as oral African narrations is a recurrent feature of these texts. The short stories of Lomami Tchibamba, of the first generation of Congolese authors writing in French, are analysed as examples for a dominantly allegorical narration. Mythical creatures taken from the context of oral literature become symbols for the process of alterity and power relations during colonialism, while the construction of a heroic figure of African resistance provides a counter-narrative to colonial texts of conquest. Thomas Mpoyi-Buatu’s novel La reproduction (1986) provides an example of fragmented writing that reflects the traumatic experience of violence in both Congolese memory of colonialism and Congolese suffering of the present violent dictatorial regime. The body of the protagonist and narrator becomes the literal site of remembering.

This article will explore the intellectual context in which French-Belgian colonial writing developed from the turn of the twentieth century to the late 1930s. This period is marked by a gradual shift from evolutionism to cultural relativism. The analysis will first focus on the Tervuren colonial exhibition of 1897 and the progressive emergence of Belgian africanism in the early twentieth century. Secondly, it will account for the ways in which this overall context bore witness to new and somewhat less Eurocentric conditions of possibility. Subsequently, the article will attempt to draw parallels between these more inclusive and seemingly less orientalising anthropological paradigms and the advent, first in France and then in Belgium, of a rejuvenated brand of colonial literature (or indigenous realism) which, for all its openness and eagerness to embrace modernity, did not result in radical rejections of colonialism on the part of its promoters. Finally, two Belgian novels in French – M. L. Delhaise-Arnould’s Amedra (1926) and H. Drum’s Luéji (1932) – will be analysed to appraise whether or not their authors’ objective to reconstitute Congolese indigeneity is a strategy to oppose Belgian modernity against Congolese supposed pre-modernity.

Paul Lomami Tchibamba (1914–85) is often described as the Congo’s first novelist. Previous research in French and English has depicted Tchibamba’s work as a straightforward example of ‘writing back’ to the colonial canon. However, this article advances scholarship on Tchibamba’s work by demonstrating that his later writing responds not only to Henry Morton Stanley’s account of the imperial subjugation of the Congo, but to Joseph Conrad’s questioning of colonialist narratives of ‘progress’. Drawing on recent theoretical work that examines intertextuality in postcolonial fiction, this article demonstrates that while Tchibamba is highly critical of Stanley, he enters into dialogue with Conrad’s exposure of colonial brutality. Bringing together comparative research insights from Congolese and European literatures, this article also employs literary translation. This is the first time that excerpts from two of Tchibamba’s most important responses to colonial authors have been translated into English. Also for the first time, Tchibamba’s novella Ngemena is shown to be a crucial postcolonial Congolese response to Heart of Darkness. Through close textual analysis of Tchibamba’s use of irony and imagery, this article’s key findings are that, while Tchibamba nuances Conrad’s disparaging portrait of a chief, he develops the ironic mode of Conrad’s An Outpost of Progress, and updates the journey upriver into the interior in Heart of Darkness. This article illustrates the complex and nuanced way in which Tchibamba interacts with his European intertexts, deploying close analyses of his responses to Conradian imagery.

Common to the matrilineal peoples of eastern central Africa is their clan system, and the reciprocal joking or “funeral friendship,” relations that exist between clans with figuratively complementary names (Cunnison 1959:62-71; Richards 1937; Stefaniszyn 1950). This paper, however, focuses on the southeastern Shaba Pedicle, and the anomalous, one-sided joking between the Vulva and (allegedly pubic) Hair clans of the Lala and Lamba chiefs. I suggest that this joking, like the claim that these clans share a common mythical ancestor, is best explained in terms of nineteenth-century Lala and Lamba history, and of their competing claims to the Pedicle's easternmost end. This region of Bukanda lies between the Aushi to the north (in Bwaushi), the Lala and Swaka to the east and south (in Ilala and Maswaka), and the Lamba (of Ilamba) to the west. The main distinction among these closely-related and adjacent peoples, with their similar customs and languages, is in the histories and traditions of their chiefs.The bizarre relationship between the chiefly Vulva and Hair clans is not widely known. I only heard of it during my fieldwork in Ilamba. The Lala, like the Lamba, straddle both the Congolese and Zambian sides of the Shaba Pedicle, and the literature on this region, in both French and English, is fragmentary and marked by an ahistorical and uncritical acceptance of oral traditions. The Lala are probably best known in relation to Mwana Lesa's Watchtower movement of the 1920s (Verbeek 1977,1983). Norman Long's Social Change and the Individual (Manchester, 1968) is the only modern ethnography on the Lala, yet this study of the enterprising Jehovah's Witnesses has little to say about dieir history or clans. Fortunately, Léon Verbeek's Filiation et usurpation (1987) has sorted through the oral and colonial histories, and has paved the way for comparative ethnohistories of the peoples on both sides of the Shaba Pedicle.

A Dissertation Presented to the Department of African Literature University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg In Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
This two part study of Tchicaya U Tam'Si's novels reflects the twin objectives of the research project. By showing in the first part the need for critical criteria founded in the socio-historical and linguistic realities of Africa, the hegemony of the Western aesthetic canon with respect to African writing is challenged. In the second part, by applying a contextualised, syncretic critical approach to U Tam'Si's prose works, important features not only of his narrative but also of his poetic discourse are illuminated. This movement from broad questions of theory to focus on a specific body of writing makes it possible to identify elements that may be considered characteristic of African writing in general while at the same time contributing to a better understanding of a particular writer's creative expression. (Abbreviation abstract)
Andrew Chakane 2019

Critical analysis of the theme “Colonisation” in the literary works of Africa: case of Ngemena by Lomami Tchibamba and La Malédiction by Ngandu Nkashama is the title of this thesis. I intend to do a critical analysis of the “colonialism” in African literature with specific reference to Congo. Some African writers, such as Mongo Beti in Pauvre Christ de Bomba, Benjamin Matip in Afrique! Nous t’ignorons, Ferdinand Oyono in Une Vie de boy and so forth made interesting criticisms of colonisation in the continent. But for their part, in spite of the similarity with the other novels, Ngemena and La Malédiction are directly focused on central Africa especially on the country of Congo. The authors mentioned above describe in their novels the effects of colonisation on religious, political and social aspects; meanwhile, in Ngemena, Lomami Tchibamba speaks about the critical periods of his country, Congo: the occupation as well as its effects. This book covers almost the period from 1908 to 1960, which was a very troubled time. But in La Malédiction, Ngandu Nkashama speaks about the deep exploitation of indigenous population in the hard labour in mines. Normally, the two novels Ngemena and La Malédiction complete each other by their relation of facts. Nevertheless, we can say that colonization and negritude are themes well exploited by researchers and authors alike in the second part of the 20th century. In fact, many authors wrote about colonization and their criticisms were rich as well as strong. But sometimes, some of them expressed their opinion in an emotional way so that the content became far from the truth. It is why, Wilberforce Umezinwa in La religion dans la littérature africaine says, in order to render the history most interesting, the narrators are prone to exaggeration: The prose and poetry do not speak generally kindly about the relationship between Africans and Europeans; but these works are filled with a bad mood against Europe, the continent of the missionaries, slave drivers, and colonialists. The relationship Between Europe and Africa is a song of Blues, a song on human distresses (Umezinwa, 1975: 13) (Own translation). Then, the African writer has an essential role in the society: to tell the history with neither bad mood nor exaggeration but with humour, as indicated by Lilyan Kesteloot. In Négritude et situation coloniale, she underlines that African authors write very emotionally when they explain the notion of Colonisation and Négritude. Sartre quoted by the same Lilyan Kesteloot mentioned that this fact is “racism anti-racism” (Kesteloot, 1968: 35, 43). Especially in Ngemena, from time to time, the author goes over the top and makes an exaggeration. In its introduction, Ngemena takes the form of an admonitory part and is written with burning eloquence. It is likely that Lomami Tchibamba had serious hopes of persuading the readers, the Congolese people, of the multiple and hard realities during the colonization period, then implicitly he pushes people to a form of vengeance. But instead of this, the main goal remains: Lomami Tshibamba always keeps his principal theme and responds to many preoccupations such as : -Who is the colonizer? -Why did he come to the country? -How did he convince the indigenous people so that he got in? -What were the circumstances of his entering? By its part in La Malédiction, Ngandu Nkashama tells the atrocity committed by the colonisation in the remote province of Kasai (Bakwanga), particularly, in the diamond mines. The novels such as Citadelle d’espoir by Ngandu Nkashama, Bel Immonde by Valentin Yves Mudimbe, Cité 15 by Charles Djungu Simba, and some articles like “L’affaire Lumumba ou la palabre sur l’indépendance au Congo” of Jean Omasombo Tshonda in Congo Meuse are steeped in the colonial and postcolonial history of Congo and this study, of course, will emphasize many aspects of the colonisation: political, sociological, religious and psychological. To analyse the correlation between the two periods of crucial time in Congo will be the most interesting aspect of this work. Therefore, the novels: Le Vieux nègre et la médaille and Une Vie de Boy of Ferdinand Oyono, La Vie et demie of Sony Labou Tansi, La Ville cruelle of Mongo Beti will be helpful to this framework in illuminating the way of social and religious aspects. Thus, an analysis and interpretation of theses novels constitute a support of large dimension to my study. Furthermore, Ngemena is a book published in 1981 and La Malédiction in 1981 (the same year); the stories seem ancient but keep their originality because of the exploited theme. It is a true historical legacy. In this way, Ngemena and La Malédiction could be considered as “vademecum” and must be read by whoever wants to know and understand the entire topic of colonization in Congo. Their contents confer to them the value of “true teaching books” of the ancient colonial structures. In short, their stories enlighten the long past colonial history; they have a profound didactic value.
Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2009.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of the Witwatersrand, 1999.
In this study I will examine two texts by the Congolese author Sony Labou Tansi, namely The Seven Solitudes of Lorsa Lopez and Parenthesis of Blood. The aim of the research is to examine how and why the author uses techniques of allegory and magic realism instead of realism in his work. By closely examining the two texts and with the help of comparisons with his other works, I intend to show that the world he is representing is too fabulous to be rendered in a realistic manner. The use of allegory and irony in the text is a strategy that helps the author to challenge the oppression and despair in his society. The issue of gender is also important in both texts, therefore, I will examine how Labou Tansi portrays women in his works. I will do this by comparing his presentation of women to other female characters found in African canonical works by male writers.