Download or read book Oral Literature in Africa written by Ruth Finnegan and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2012-09 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970, and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork, the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This revised edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes a new introduction, additional images and an updated bibliography, as well as its original chapters on poetry, prose, "drum language" and drama, and an overview of the social, linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa. This book is the first volume in the World Oral Literature Series, an ongoing collaboration between OBP and World Oral Literature Project. A free online archive of recordings and photographs that Finnegan made during her fieldwork in the late 1960s is hosted by the World Oral Literature Project (http: //www.oralliterature.org/collections/rfinnegan001.html) and can also be accessed from publisher's website.

Download or read book Liberating Voices written by Gayl Jones and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The powerful novelist here turns penetrating critic, giving usâe"in lively styleâe"both trenchant literary analysis and fresh insight on the art of writing. âeoeWhen African American writers began to trust the literary possibilities of their own verbal and musical creations,âe writes Gayl Jones, they began to transform the European and European American models, and to gain greater artistic sovereignty.âe The vitality of African American literature derives from its incorporation of traditional oral forms: folktales, riddles, idiom, jazz rhythms, spirituals, and blues. Jones traces the development of this literature as African American writers, celebrating their oral heritage, developed distinctive literary forms. The twentieth century saw a new confidence and deliberateness in African American work: the move from surface use of dialect to articulation of a genuine black voice; the move from blacks portrayed for a white audience to characterization relieved of the need to justify. Innovative writingâe"such as Charles Waddell Chesnuttâe(tm)s depiction of black folk culture, Langston Hughesâe(tm)s poetic use of blues, and Amiri Barakaâe(tm)s recreation of the short story as a jazz pieceâe"redefined Western literary tradition. For Jones, literary technique is never far removed from its social and political implications. She documents how literary form is inherently and intensely national, and shows how the European monopoly on acceptable forms for literary art stifled American writers both black and white. Jones is especially eloquent in describing the dilemma of the African American writers: to write from their roots yet retain a universal voice; to merge the power and fluidity of oral tradition with the structure needed for written presentation. With this work Gayl Jones has added a new dimension to African American literary history.

Download or read book African Oral Literature written by Isidore Okpewho and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1992-09-22 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ". . . its pages come alive with wonderful illustrative material coupled with sensitve and insightful commentary." —Reviews in Anthropology " . . . the scope, breadth, and lucidity of this excellent study confirm that Okpewho is undoubtedly the most important authority writing on African oral literature right now . . . " —Research in African Literatures "Truly a tour de force of individual scholarship . . . " —World Literature Today " . . . excellent . . . " —African Affairs " . . . a thorough synthesis of the main issues of oral literature criticism, as well as a grounding in experienced fieldwork, a wide-ranging theoretical base, and a clarity of argument rare among academics." —Multicultural Review "This is a breathtakingly ambitious project . . . " —Harold Scheub " . . . a definitive accounting of the evidence of living oral traditions in Africa today. Professor Okpewho's authority as an expert in this important new field is unrivaled." —Gregory Nagy "Isidore Okpewho's African Oral Literature is a marvelous piece of scholarship and wide-ranging research. It presents the most comprehensive survey of the field of oral literature in Africa." —Emmanuel Obiechina " . . . a tour de force of scholarship in which Okpewho casts his net across the African continent, searching for its verbal forms through voluminous recent writings and presents African oral literature in a new voice, proclaiming the literariness of African folklore." —Dan Ben-Amos "This is an outstanding book by a scholar whose work has already influenced how African literature should be conceived. . . . Professor Okpewho is a scholar with a special talent to nurture scholarship in others. After this work, African literature will never be the same." —Mazisi Kunene Isidore Okpewho, for many years Professor of English at the University of Ibadan, is one of the handful of African scholars who has facilitated the growth of African oral literature to its status today as a literary enterprise concerned with the artistic foundations of human culture. This comprehensive critical work firmly establishes oral literature as a landmark of high artistic achievement and situates it within the broader framework of contemporary African culture.

Download or read book The Oral and Beyond written by Ruth H. Finnegan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ruth Finnegan examines the verbal arts in Africa and looks at whether the image of Africa as the 'oral' continent stands up to a more comparative and critical approach to 'orality' and performance.

Download or read book Introduction to African Oral Literature and Performance written by Bayo Ogunjimi and published by Africa World Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rev. ed. of: Introduction to African oral literature. c1991.

Download or read book Oral Literature in the Digital Age written by Mark Turin and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thanks to ever-greater digital connectivity, interest in oral traditions has grown beyond that of researcher and research subject to include a widening pool of global users. When new publics consume, manipulate and connect with field recordings and digital cultural archives, their involvement raises important practical and ethical questions. This volume explores the political repercussions of studying marginalised languages; the role of online tools in ensuring responsible access to sensitive cultural materials; and ways of ensuring that when digital documents are created, they are not fossilised as a consequence of being archived. Fieldwork reports by linguists and anthropologists in three continents provide concrete examples of overcoming barriers -- ethical, practical and conceptual -- in digital documentation projects. Oral Literature In The Digital Age is an essential guide and handbook for ethnographers, field linguists, community activists, curators, archivists, librarians, and all who connect with indigenous communities in order to document and preserve oral traditions.

Download or read book Specimens of Bushman Folklore written by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Oral Tradition written by Jan Vansina and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Oral Tradition as History written by Jan M. Vansina and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 1985-09-06 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jan Vansina’s 1961 book, Oral Tradition, was hailed internationally as a pioneering work in the field of ethno-history. Originally published in French, it was translated into English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, and Hungarian. Reviewers were unanimous in their praise of Vansina’s success in subjecting oral traditions to intense functional analysis. Now, Vansina—with the benefit of two decades of additional thought and research—has revised his original work substantially, completely rewriting some sections and adding much new material. The result is an essentially new work, indispensable to all students and scholars of history, anthropology, folklore, and ethno-history who are concerned with the transmission and potential uses of oral material. “Those embarking on the challenging adventure of historical fieldwork with an oral community will find the book a valuable companion, filled with good practical advice. Those who already have collected bodies of oral material, or who strive to interpret and analyze that collected by others, will be forced to subject their own methodological approaches to a critical reexamination in the light of Vansina’s thoughtful and provocative insights. . . . For the second time in a quarter of a century, we are profoundly in the debt of Jan Vansina.”—Research in African Literatures “Oral Traditions as History is an essential addition to the basic literature of African history.”—American Historical Review

Download or read book The Oral Tradition of the Baganda of Uganda written by Immaculate N. Kizza and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Baganda people of Uganda enjoy an extraordinarily rich oral tradition, which serves as a window into their culture, history, and experiences as a people. This comprehensive, multigenre work is both a study of the Baganda people's oral literature--framed within the broader contexts of the African oral tradition genre, modern African literature, and global literary studies--and a collection of representative stories. Cultural explanations throughout the text explore the living culture of this unique East African nation. Particular attention is paid to the history of Uganda, thus placing the oral tradition within its proper context. An appendix offers sample Luganda songs.

Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to the African Novel written by F. Abiola Irele and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-23 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa's strong tradition of storytelling has long been an expression of an oral narrative culture. African writers such as Amos Tutuola, Naguib Mahfouz, Wole Soyinka and J. M. Coetzee have adapted these older forms to develop and enhance the genre of the novel, in a shift from the oral mode to print. Comprehensive in scope, these new essays cover the fiction in the European languages from North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara, as well as in Arabic. They highlight the themes and styles of the African novel through an examination of the works that have either attained canonical status - an entire chapter is devoted to the work of Chinua Achebe - or can be expected to do so. Including a guide to further reading and a chronology, this is the ideal starting-point for students of African and world literatures.

Download or read book The African Imagination written by Abiola Irele and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2001 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora. The African Imagination includes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampat B , and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.

Download or read book The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature written by Abiola Irele and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 906 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Featuring new perspectives on African and Caribbean literature, this History explores the scope of the literature (variety of languages, regions and genres); nature of composition; and complex relationship with African social and geo-political history. It comprehensively covers the field of African literature, defined by creative expression in Africa as well as the black diaspora. This major history of African literature will be an essential resource for specialists and students.

Download or read book Things Fall Apart written by Chinua Achebe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1994-09-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A true classic of world literature . . . A masterpiece that has inspired generations of writers in Nigeria, across Africa, and around the world.” —Barack Obama “African literature is incomplete and unthinkable without the works of Chinua Achebe.” —Toni Morrison Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read Things Fall Apart is the first of three novels in Chinua Achebe's critically acclaimed African Trilogy. It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political andreligious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order. With more than 20 million copies sold and translated into fifty-seven languages, Things Fall Apart provides one of the most illuminating and permanent monuments to African experience. Achebe does not only capture life in a pre-colonial African village, he conveys the tragedy of the loss of that world while broadening our understanding of our contemporary realities.

Download or read book The Palm Wine Drinkard written by Amos Tutuola and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2014-07-01 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic novel tells the phantasmagorical story of an alcoholic man and his search for his dead palm-wine tapster. As he travels through the land of the dead, he encounters a host of supernatural and often terrifying beings - among them the complete gentleman who returns his body parts to their owners and the insatiable hungry-creature. Mixing Yoruba folktales with what T. S. Eliot described as a 'creepy crawly imagination', The Palm-Wine Drinkard is regarded as the seminal work of African literature.'Brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching.' Dylan Thomas, Observer'Tutuola's art conceals - or rather clothes - his purpose, as all good art must do.' Chinua Achebe

Download or read book Toward the Decolonization of African Literature written by Chinweizu and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Contemporary African Fiction written by Derek Wright and published by Bayreuth African Studies. This book was released on 1997 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: