African Poetry
Things to Consider:
- Negritude
- African History: Colonialism & Struggle for
Independence
- Imagery
- Spirituality
- Reading Poetry Site
** Homework Questions **
Post-War and Postcolonial Literature, 1945-1968
1438:
- What did the Negritude movement involve? (See also 1440-41)
Leopold Senghor (1906-2001)
Senegal
1440:
- What is the central subject of Senghor's poetry?
"Letter to a Poet" (1945)
1442-43:
- Summarize the speaker's message.
"Night in Sine" (1945)
1443-44:
- Summarize the speaker's message.
1444:
- What is the "living voice" of the Dead (25)?
"Black Woman" (1945)
1444:
- Describe the tone of this poem.
- Explain lines 10-13.
1445:
"Prayer to the Masks" (1945).
1445:
- Explain the cultural significance of African masks.
- How, according to the speaker, is Europe "tied to us at the
navel" (12)?
Other Discussion Questions:
1436:
- What did decolonization involve?
- What is the "third world"?
1437:
- Explain the creation of the independent nations of India,
Pakistan, and Israel following World War II.
1438:
- Explain the hybridity of late 20th C. world literature.
1439:
- What did "neorealism" involve?
"Letter to a Poet"
1443:
- Explain lines 12-14.
- Explain: "You were offer the Spirits the virgin fruits of
your garden" (15).
"Night in Sine"
1443:
- How can silence be "rhythmic" (5)?
- What is "the deep pulse of Africa" (6)?
1444:
- Why does the speaker want the lamp lit (18)?
- What is Elissa (20)?
"Black Woman"
1445:
Part Two Homework Questions:
"Letter to a Prisoner" (1942)
1446:
- Explain the image of white bread, milk, and salt (19).
1447:
- Explain the speaker's reasons for addressing Ngom.
"To New York" (1956)
1447-48:
- How has the speaker's view of New York changed? What has
caused this change?
1448:
- How, according to the speaker, is "Night more truthful than
the day" (33)?
1449:
- How does the image of the tom-tom function here?
- Explain the final stanza.
"Songs for Signare" (1961).
- What is synaesthesia? How is it demonstrated in this poem?
"Elegy of the Circumcised" (1961)
- What is an elegy? In what ways is this poem an elegy? In
what ways is the identification of this poem as an elegy
paradoxical?
1450:
- Explain the description of the death of the poem and of
syntax (23).
1451:
- Explain: "The poem is a snake-bird" (49).
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