▶ literature
introduction
Even people who have studied literature most of their lives
are oft en unsure how to defi ne what literature is and what it
is not. Perhaps everything that has ever been written is lit-
erature. Some people would exclude such writings as laundry
lists and legal documents, yet a historian might be able to see
a world of information about an ancient culture in its laundry
lists and legal documents. Th is fuzziness in defi nition can be
maddening when one wishes to be precise, but part of the at-
traction of the study of literature is its tendency to transcend
boundaries, changing its shape to suit the needs of a particu-
lar author or culture.
In general, literature can be divided into four categories:
poetry, fi ction, drama, and prose nonfi ction. Poetry is ex-
pressed in verse, using rhythms and associations of sounds,
as in the case of rhyme. Fiction tells a story and usually has a
plot and characters whose actions make up the plot. Drama
also tells a story but through actors depicting the characters
of the story. Nonfi ction prose is harder to defi ne. Prose is
writing that is not in verse, and nonfi ction prose is a factual
accounting of the subject under consideration, oft en taking
real events and people as its starting point. Some literary
scholars insist that prose is more than that; they assert that
writing should be artful and graceful in order to be consid-
ered prose, meaning that laundry lists do not count. Th ese
four categories are commonly used to discuss literature be-
cause they are convenient. When looked at closely, however,
they are not as well defi ned as they may seem, because they
sometimes overlap.
Take the matter of poetry. Poetry is the oldest-known
literary form, owing to its oral tradition. Long before people
created written languages, they learned to tell stories. Th ese
stories were passed down orally from one generation to the
next; hence the term oral tradition. In illiterate societies or in
societies in which literacy was limited to a minority of people,
the oral tradition was a way to preserve religious stories, tales
of heroes, wisdom acquired through experience, and stories
that were just plain fun to hear. In almost every known soci-
ety certain people became professional storytellers.
Storytelling was a way for a traveler to earn food and
lodging for a night. A good storyteller could barter the telling
of a story for goods or exchange it for money. A professional
storyteller would be expected to know certain tales, long and
shor t, t hat audiences wanted to hear over and over again. Th is
required storytellers to memorize lengthy historical and re-
ligious tales as well as numerous small stories. Th at ancient
people were illiterate did not mean they also were stupid;
an audience would oft en know the most important stories
by heart and would know when a storyteller got something
wrong. Th is is how poetry became important, because poetry
has rhythm, and rhythm makes remembering words easier.
Th us, many ancient religious works were fi rst written down in
verse, because they were originally part of the oral tradition.
If one looks at pictures of ancient storytellers such as Homer,
one may notice that the storytellers oft en hold a stringed in-
strument or are accompanied by a musician. Th e rhythmic
strumming of the instrument would help the storyteller keep
his or her rhythm when reciting a tale, which would assist
the storyteller in remembering the words. Long epics such as
Homer’s Iliad were composed in verse and memorized and
recited in verse. In fact, in the Iliad itself Homer refers to sto-
rytellers as singers. One can see immediately the fuzziness
in the four categories of literature, because the ancient ep-
ics were both poetry and stories. Th e people who fi rst heard
them probably appreciated them for both their poetic use
of language and their plots and characters. When studying
drama, one is likely to see the same sort of blending. Many
ancient dramas were written in verse, and audiences admired
the poetic language as well as the plots.
Dramas may have been the next step in the development
of literature. Most of what is known about ancient dramas
comes from plays that were composed by writers who were
self-consciously creating literary works, which means that
they are imperfect representations of the dramas that pre-
ceded them, before people could write. Most anthropologists
believe that drama developed out of religious rites. In dramas
people portrayed religious fi gures, perhaps singing or danc-
ing to show the spiritual nature of the fi gures. Th e earliest
such dramas seem to have been presented during celebrations
of the coming of spring. In many parts of the world, these fes-
tivities included the ritual killing of one or more of the actors,
usually youngsters, whose deaths were meant to renew the
fertility of the soil for the upcoming planting of crops.
Once a culture became literate, it was diffi cult to stamp
out this practice. Even aft er a government managed to end the
practice of sacrifi cing actors, a playwright might be ritually
killed if his play did not satisfy his audience. Th is serious-
ness is sometimes a help to people studying ancient societ-
ies, because various literary works were intended to express
the hopes, fears, dreams, and nightmares of the authors and
audiences. For example, the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient
Mesopotamia reveals a concern for defi ning what is good and
what is evil, a concern about loneliness, an interest in what
makes someone a friend, bewilderment at why people suff er,
and a longing for immortality. Th e very fact that ancient peo-
ples wrote down this epic and preserved it for centuries shows
that it touched on matters of importance to them; by reading
the epic, a person can learn about them. Further, a great liter-
ary work touches on our common humanity, and Gilgamesh
speaks of issues that still interest people today, allowing mod-
ern audiences to see how another group of people in circum-
stances diff erent from our own viewed issues that still matter.AFRICA
BY DIANNE WHITE OYLER
Literature in ancient Africa represents the creative thought
of indigenous people in both oral and written forms ofliterature: Africa 639