EXPLORING AFRICA’S RICH FOLKLORE FOR LITERARY SYMBIOSIS

Abstract

Over the years, Africa’s rich folklore has been advertised negatively by European scholars carrying out studies and
research in Africa. These unacceptable scholarly activities are caused by the following factors: one, Eurocentric and
biased mindset against anything African. Two, most of the scholars were not literary scholars but anthropologists
who were more interested in the cultural aspects of the folklores rather than the creativity and the literariness in
them. It is against this backdrop that African writers of literature have in their writings elected to set the records
straight and rewrite the wrongs written by foreigners by showing the literariness and creativity in our oral literature.
In plays, novels, poems and short stories, African writers continuously show an interaction and marriage between
oral literature and written literature which in this work is referred to as literary symbiosis. In literary symbiosis,
African writers use folkloric materials as sources on which their written literature is based be it poetry, prose and
drama. In this paper, examples of such written works which enjoy African folklore as foundation are presented.