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Article

Senghor, Leopold Sedar  

Abiola F. Irele

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
27 April 2010
Published online:
30 September 2012

The name of Leopold Sedar Senghor has become associated with the concept of Négritude, which provides the keynote of all his work, both as poet and as philosopher. There is a fundamental connection between the two aspects of his career and expression, for Senghor’s poetry represents an effort to invest Africa with poetic significance and thus provides the most sustained expression of Négritude’s imaginative revaluation of Africa. The thought processes reflected in the poetry are clarified in the ideological writings, which can be said to elaborate in discursive terms the themes expressed by means of images in the poetry.

Senghor was born in 1906 at Joal a coastal village in the Sine Saloum valley in central Senegal He began to learn French when at the age of seven he entered the Catholic elementary school in the nearby village of Ngasobil He received his secondary education at the Lycée van ...

Article

Senghor, Léopold Sédar  

Janet Vaillant

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
08 December 2011
Published online:
30 September 2012

Senegalese poet, philosopher, politician, and first president of Senegal (1960–1980), was born in Joal, a small coastal town south of Dakar in what was then the French West African Federation, now Senegal. His father came from the Serer people and was successful in the peanut export trade. His mother, one of several wives, came from a small country village, where Senghor spent his early childhood. His father sent him away for education when he was seven, and at eight he entered a Catholic mission boarding school. A pious and academically gifted child, he excelled in his studies, gaining support from the missionaries to continue his education in Dakar. He also acquired a deep Catholic faith, from which came his conviction that peaceful solutions exist for the most difficult of problems and from which he drew sustenance throughout his life. In 1928 he went to Paris to continue his education ...

Article

Senghor, Léopold Sédar  

David P. Johnson

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Demonstrating a rare combination of intellectual, artistic, and political skill, Léopold Sédar Senghor towered over modern Senegal, unlike any other figure in that country’s history. Senghor’s quest to find an artistic and political synthesis between African and European ways of life inspired his lifelong record of creative achievement. Although as a youth he immersed himself in French culture, his ultimate inability to become “a black-skinned Frenchman” led him to cultivate his “Africanness.” He helped to define two of the key political and intellectual movements of twentieth-century Africa: African Socialism and Négritude.

Born in Ndjitor, Senegal, to a Serer father and a Fulani mother, Senghor strove to represent all of Senegal’s peoples in his writing and politics. He attended Roman Catholic mission schools in what was then French West Africa, and in 1922 entered the Collège Libermann a seminary in Dakar where he intended to study for the priesthood He ...