Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Senghor, Léopold Sédar - Isaac I. Elimimian （essay date 1994）

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Isaac I. Elimimian （essay date 1994）

SOURCE: “Negritude and African Poetry,” in Critical Theory and African Literature Today: A Review, edited by Eldred Durosimi Jones, James Currey, 1994, pp. 22-43.

[In the following excerpt, Elimimian examines Senghor's contribution to the negritude movement, particularly his evocation of deceased African ancestry, black beauty, Western exploitation, and the possibility of reconciliation in his poetry.]

The word, ‘Negritude’, which connotes ‘blackness’, has been employed in literary discourse for decades. Charles Lamb used the word in 1822 in his essay, ‘The Praise of Chimney-Sweepers’. Aimé Césaire employed it in 1938 in his poem Return to my Native Land: ‘my negritude is not a stone / nor deafness flung out against the clamour of the day’. In African literary criticism, Eldred Jones avers that Soyinka has little or no basis for attacking the Negritude writers since...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Newsweek （review date 27 July 1964）
   2. Gwendolyn Brooks （review date 13 September 1964）
   3. Robert W. July （review date 25 October 1964）
   4. O. R. Dathorne （essay date 1974）
   5. Lilyan Kesteloot （essay date 1974）
   6. Frederick Ivor Case （essay date 1975）
   7. Janis L. Pallister （essay date April 1980）
   8. Dorothy S. Blair （essay date 1984）
   9. Janet G. Vaillant （essay date 1990）
   10. Roger Shattuck and Samba Ka （review date 20 December 1990）
   11. K. Anthony Appiah （review date 5 July 1992）
   12. Isaac I. Elimimian （essay date 1994）
   13. Koffi Anyinefa （essay date Summer 1996）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. African Literature