François-Joseph Amon d'Aby


François-Joseph Amon d'Aby was a French-language playwright and essayist in the Côte d'Ivoire.

Life

Amon d'Aby started work in the government archives in 1937, rising to become their director.
He was a pioneer of Ivorian theatre. He wrote plays for several organizations: Le Théâtre Indigène de la Côte d'Ivoire, which he founded with Germain Coffi Gadeau in 1938; the Cercle Culturel et Folklorique de la Côte d'Ivoire, which he, Gadeau and Bernard Dadié founded in 1953; and the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne . Though his earlier plays were based upon Ivorian oral literature, his later plays also borrowed from European traditions. Generally moralizing, his plays attacked some traditional social practices as outdated in a modern society.
Amon d'Aby also edited collections of folk tales, and published several cultural and sociological studies of the Côte d'Ivoire.

Works

;Plays