148 AN AFRICAN JOURNAL OF NEW WRITING NUMBER 51, 01 JULY 2014 ISSN 0331-0566 The Influence of Negritude Movement on Modern African Literature and Writers: A Study of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Elechi Amadi’s The Concubine Alexander A. Onwumere BA, PGDE, MA Imo State Polytechnic, Umuagwo onwulex@gmail.com and Florence Egbulonu, BA. ED, MA Imo State polytechnic, Umuagwo ucheduke@yahoo.com Abstract Negritude is a movement and an ideology. As a movement, it is deeply rooted in Pan-African congresses, exhibitions, organizations and publications produced to challenge the theory of race hierarchy and black inferiority developed by philosophers such as Friedrich Hegel and Joseph de Gobineau. As an ideology, it is a defining milestone in the rehabilitation of Africa and African diasporic identity and dignity, and thus, provided a unifying, fighting and liberating instrument for black Francophone students in the first half of the twentieth century in search of their identity. It was an expression of a new humanism that positions