Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Senghor, Léopold Sédar - Lilyan Kesteloot （essay date 1974）

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Lilyan Kesteloot （essay date 1974）

SOURCE: “Léopold Senghor: Chants d'ombre and Hosties noires,” in Black Writers in French: A Literary History of Negritude, translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy, Temple University Press, 1974, pp. 194-226.

[In the following excerpt, Kesteloot provides analysis of Senghor's formative influences, African themes, and early poetic style in Chants d'ombre and Hosties noires.]

Léopold Sédar Senghor was attracted to poetry very early. As a lycée student in Dakar, he was composing romantic verse even before he developed an enthusiasm for Corneille and Racine. In Paris, Senghor discovered Péguy, then the modern European and American Negro poets. Later on, while studying for his degree in literature, he read the works of the medieval troubadors and a great deal of Claudel, but experimented with his own talent as a writer mainly by translating into French the poems of his homeland,...

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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