Meters in Motion

Researches in African poetries have approached it on many perspectives, but on the other side the stylistics of these art forms have raised less interest. Metre is an example of this. In the Swahili and Wolof poetic traditions, the existence of metrical patterns is a datum reported by scholars, with very little further elaboration. In particular, these metrical patterns have often been seen as a mere adaptation of the Arabic ones. This book aims at challenging this view, offering a historical reconstruction of the development of the Swahili and Wolof metrical systems. Particular attention is given to the role of the Arabic model: this work shows that the Swahili and Wolof poetries presented an elaborated stylistics even before the Arabic model affected them. In the case of Swahili, one can even speak of preexisting metrical traditions. The influence from Arabic has certainly deeply changed the local Swahili and Wolof stylistics of poetry, but many elements of continuity exist between the two periods before and after it. In these two contexts, then, stylistics has always been a fundamental trait of poetry and a more attentive look at its history can reveal much of the overall development of the poetic tradition in general.

Emiliano Minerba, University of Bayreuth, Germany