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Transcription: [00:02:14]
{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}
--when Gustavus Vassa published his book,

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there's no strong or supported account Africans having written

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any fiction, nonfiction, or what could be considered prose or prosaic literature.

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Now, from the beginning–until 1790–African civilizations and cultures did flourish

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and stories and novels, fiction, prose, whatever,

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all of these were developed, but only in oral form.

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Thus the term "oral literature".

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Now the essence of oral literature was presented early in the series

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by Professor Daniel Kunene and so I won't delve into that here,

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but the major point I'm trying to make is that

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it was not until 1790, with Gustavus Vassa, that

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the real, first written African literature appeared as

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prose, prosaic, or fiction, or nonfiction literature's concern.

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And I have to emphasize here that we're discussing African English literature,

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for before Gustavus Vassa's time, of course,

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there was French and other European languages used to write literature,

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and Arabic was used as well.

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Now, the first real African novelist appeared in South Africa in 1873.

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Thomas Mofolo, he was born in 1873,

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coming out of, or indigenous to Basutoland,

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which is a portion of South Africa, what is known today as South Africa.

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Mofolo's first novel appeared in English in 1920.

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under the title "Moeti oa bochabela"

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meaning "The Pilgrim of the East", sometimes translated "The Wanderer to the East".

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And one sees in that novel a boy

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But, on another level, and this is true of much of African literature,

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in that you find more than one meaning, sometimes two

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sometimes three, even more meanings in the literature.

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Mofolo's "Moeti oa bochabela" can be seen as a fable,

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and I'm indicating a--