Oral forms turned poetic

Each of these authors starts from a precise oral form and gives it literary status by naming it. Zadi Zaourou draws didiga from Bété hunting chants and founds a poetics of the spoken tale; Sutherland transposes the Ananse stories to the stage as anansegoro; Ndong Ndoutoume writes the Fang mvett, an epic sung to a stringed instrument; Pacéré turns the speech of Mossi drums into a bendrology; Lhérisson had already fixed the Haitian lodyans, a spoken chronicle, in 1905. These are passages from voice to book.

works 8

• NovelLa Famille des Pitite-CailleJustin Lhérisson · 1905not translated into EnglishThe ambitions of a cunning businessman serve to mock Haitian politics and manners, told in the country's oral manner.Literature
• TheatreForiwaEfua Sutherland · 1967Five years after independence, Ghanaian theatre shows a small town that must reconcile its old customs with new ways.Literature
• EpicLe MvettTsira Ndong Ndoutoume · 1970not translated into EnglishThe great sung epic of the Fang, transcribed into French by a master of the instrument that gives it its name.Literature
• PoetryÇa tire sous le SahelTitinga Frédéric Pacéré · 1976not translated into EnglishSatires in verse, set to the rhythm of the Mossi drum, written by a lawyer from Ouagadougou.Literature
• PoetryDéjà vuNoël X. Ebony · 1983not translated into EnglishThe first collection by an Ivorian poet in exile, which breaks with the poetry of his elders.Literature
• TheatreLa Guerre des femmesBernard Zadi Zaourou · 1985not translated into EnglishA myth of the earliest times, when women and men lived in two enemy camps.Literature
• NarrativeBiboubouah, chroniques équatorialesFerdinand Allogho-Oké · 1985not translated into EnglishShort tales of the Fang country and its forests, built on the unusual events that the language names with a single word.Literature
• NovelRebelleFatou Keïta · 1998not translated into EnglishA young girl who refuses excision, from the village of her childhood to France.Literature