1. Introduction: The Map of Understanding
This document serves as a pedagogical map, tracing the profound ontological reclamation of the Black man within the literature of the Lusophone world. We are charting a course that follows the African voice as it moves from being a discursively silenced object of the European gaze to a revolutionary, self-actualized protagonist.
For the learner, this evolution is more than a literary exercise; it is the study of the “blueprints for independence.” Understanding these shifts is the key to grasping how national identities were forged in Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe. This is the story of how literature ceased to be a tool of empire and became the ultimate act of liberation—an intellectual “reafricanization of spirits.”
This journey began not with the African voice, but with a distant, expansionist gaze that viewed a continent as a vast, silent wilderness.
2. The Era of Discoveries and Expansion (15th – 17th Century)
In this initial stage, “African literature” does not exist. What we find instead is a “Literature of Discoveries,” a discourse of power written by Portuguese authors (Zurara, Camões, João de Barros) rooted in the Renaissance ideology of “Faith and Empire” (Fé e o Império). These texts were designed to ennoble Portuguese culture to the level of European science by documenting maritime efforts.
Essential Features of the Expansionist Optic:
- The Lusitanian Effort: The narrative is centered entirely on the glorification of Portuguese expansion and the “dilatation” of the faith.
- The Distant Subject: African lands are framed as “barbarous kingdoms,” and the inhabitants are merely elements of an exotic, unexplored landscape.
- Historical Anchors: While these are not African voices, they provide the “saber de experiência feito” (knowledge made of experience) of first contacts, such as the 1482 arrival at the Zaire River.
As the centuries progressed, this distant curiosity hardened into the ideological shackles of Colonial Literature, moving from exploration to systematic domination.
3. Colonial Literature: The Period of Objectification
Reaching its zenith in the 1920s and 1930s, Colonial Literature was a project of “coisificação” (objectification). Writers like Henrique Galvão and Hipólito Raposo utilized the “exotic” to justify a fascist and colonialist order, stripping the African man of human complexity and reducing him to a trope.
The primary function of this narrative was to elevate the European to the status of a mythical “desbravador” (trailblazer) while using pseudo-scientific theories of racial inferiority—influenced by thinkers like Gobineau and the early “pre-logical” theories of Lévy-Bruhl—to justify oppression.
| Entity | Literary Representation (The “How”) | Primary Trait/Evidence |
| The White Man | Mythical Hero / Agent of Sacrifice | The bearer of “superior culture”; the “sacrificed” civilizer in a “hostile” land. |
| The Black Man | Object / Animal | Seen paternalistically as a “child” or animalized with “beast-like instincts.” |
Authors like Galvão frequently used dehumanizing language, describing African features as “demonic” or comparing individuals to “animals of race.” This period of silence, however, was eventually disrupted by the internal shifts of the 19th century.
4. The 19th Century: The Birth of National Sentiment
The mid-19th century marks a pivotal “turning point” fueled by the arrival of the printing press (Cape Verde 1842, Angola 1845) and the expansion of education. This era saw the emergence of a “hidden” history: while local printing began with Maia Ferreira in 1849, the tradition of African-born writers stretches back further, to figures like André Alvares de Almada (1594) and Antónia Gertrudes Pusich (1844).
The Pioneers of Protagonism:
- José da Silva Maia Ferreira: Author of Espontaneidades da minha alma (1849), the first book printed in Lusophone Africa. His work introduced a romantic, patriotic sentiment for the pátria.
- Alfredo Troni: His realist work Nga Mutúri (1882) provided a sophisticated critique of social alienation and the “coisificação” of the Black man within the rigid social structures of Luanda.
- Joaquim Dias Cordeiro da Matta: A brilliant philologist and ethnologue. Influenced by the researcher Héli Chatelain, he urged his compatriots to “found our own literature.” By documenting Angolan proverbs and languages, he proved that African cultures possessed a complex, inherent structure.
These early seeds of local identity provided the intellectual soil for the interventionist “noise” of the Negritude movement.
5. Literature of African Expression: Protagonism and Negritude
The “Literature of African Expression” marks the moment the center of the universe shifted. The African man moved from being an object of study to an interventionist subject. This era transitioned from the forced silence of the colonial era to the “Grito” (The Cry)—a rebellious, humanized voice reclaiming its dignity.
| Region | Key Publication/Movement | Year | Core Significance |
| Cape Verde | Claridade Magazine | 1936 | A “long process of awareness” focused on the reality of the soil and “Cabo-verdianidade.” |
| São Tomé | Ilha de nome Santo | 1943 | Francisco José Tenreiro’s poetry: the first major voice of Negritude in Portuguese. |
| Angola | Mensagem Magazine | 1951 | Reclaiming the “grito” and the “reafricanization of spirits.” |
| Mozambique | Msaho Magazine | 1952 | Establishing authentic national expression and cultural resistance. |
| Guiné-Bissau | Mantenhas para quem luta! | 1977 | The emergence of poetry as a “tool of combat” and post-liberation identity. |
This movement was anchored in Negritude, the glorification of African values. We see this powerfully in Tenreiro’s exaltation of black hands (mãos negras)—hands that may not have invented the compass, but which “drank the words of the corás, of the quissanges, and of the timbila… telegraphed words received from heart to heart.”
6. Summary Comparison: From Object to Subject
The following synthesis allows the learner to distinguish the essential shifts across these three defining eras:
| Feature | Literature of Discoveries | Colonial Literature | Literature of African Expression |
| Author Perspective | Portuguese / Expansionist | European / Colonizer | African / Nationalist |
| Black Representation | Distant “Other” | Objectified / Animalized | Protagonist / Humanized |
| Tone | Glorification of Empire | Paternalistic / Racist | Interventionist / Rebellious |
| Core Goal | “Faith and Empire” | Justification of Oppression | National Liberation |
The Learning Narrative: The evolution of Lusophone African literature is a journey of reclaiming the self. The move from being “written about” by outsiders to “writing oneself” is the ultimate act of intellectual liberation. These voices, once silenced, now stand as the foundational pillars of five independent nations.
7. Key Glossary for the Aspiring Learner
Reafricanization of Spirits: A concept central to late-stage Negritude and national movements, referring to the psychological and cultural process of shedding colonial “alienation” to return to African roots.
Negritude: A literary and ideological movement celebrating African cultural values and identity; a definitive rejection of colonial inferiority.
Coisificação (Objectification): The process of treating a person as a “thing” or object, a strategy used in colonial literature to strip Africans of human complexity.
Claridosos: Intellectuals associated with the magazine Claridade, who sought to ground Cape Verdean literature in local reality rather than European models.
Assimilacionismo (Assimilation): A colonial policy pressuring Africans to abandon their cultures for Portuguese customs to be considered “civilized.”
