Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook: African Units

Showing posts with label African Units. Show all posts

Myth-Folklore Unit: West African Folktales

Overview. The stories in West African Folktales were collected in the early years of the 20th century from African students at a teacher training center in Accra, the capital of Ghana, a country that is home to over 100 ethnic groups (Ashanti, Fante, Ewe, and more). Many of the stories focus on Anansi, a sly, greedy, dangerous trickster. You will also meet Kweku Tsin, Anansi's good-hearted son who is sometimes able to outwit his father. According to one legend, Anansi became the moon in the sky, but Keweku Tsin became the sun, literally outshining his father. Anansi's tricks also explain the origins of other natural phenomena: why the lizard bobs his head up and down, why termites destroy human houses, and why spiders like to hide under stones. There are other animal stories in this collection also, including tales of tortoises, tigers, chameleons and elephants, and some human adventures too!

Language. These stories are told in modern English prose, so the language used should pose no difficulties.

Story Length. These are all single-page stories.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: West Africa. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

Table of Contents:

Free audiobook available!

READING A:

READING B:

Myth-Folklore Unit: Nigerian Folk Stories

Overview. The stories in Folk Stories From Southern Nigeria were collected during the early years of the 20th century by Elphinstone Dayrell, a British colonial official in Ikom, near the Niger River delta. It is a marvelous collection of stories filled with dramatic human adventures, often involving the "kings of Calabar," along with many stories from the world of nature, including origin stories such as why worms live underground, why the elephant's eyes are so small, and why the bat flies only at night. You will read about how fish used to live on the land until a certain fish fell in love with the leopard's wife, and how the sun and the moon used to live here on the earth, too, until a hospitality crisis caused them to move up into the sky. There are stories about familiar animals here, like dogs and cats and chickens, along with distinctively African animals like the elephant and the hippopotamus. So, if you would like to know at least one folktale about a hippo, this is the unit for you!

Language. These stories are told in modern English prose, so the language used should pose no difficulties.

Story Length. These are all single-page stories.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: Nigerian Folk Stories. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

READING A:

READING B:

(elephant)

Myth-Folklore Unit: South African Folktales

Overview. These South African Folktales were collected in the 19th century, mainly from the San people (Bushmen), nomadic hunter-gatherers who live in South Africa and in the neighboring countries of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. The focus is animal stories and, in particular, stories about the jackal, a dangerous and comical trickster figure. There are also many stories about the lion and his family, along with rabbits (and that rabbit can be quite a trickster himself!), and other familiar animals such as doves, tortoises, and snakes, plus distinctively African animals like the ostrich and the eland. There are tales of tiny animals too, like the many different kinds of ants who live in fear of the dreaded anteater, or the little "tink-tinkje" (finch) who aspired to be king of all the birds.

Language. These stories are told in modern English prose, so the language used should pose no difficulties.

Story Length. These are all single-page stories.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: South African Folktales. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

READING A:

READING B:

(South African veldt, Mpumalanga)

Myth-Folklore Unit: Stories from Congo

Overview. These stories from Notes on the Folklore of the Fjort were collected in the late 19th century by R. E. Dennett who spent four decades in Africa as a trader. He was also a member of the Congo Reform Association, protesting the British colonial treatment of the Congolese. The stories he collected during his years in the Congo provide important evidence about "fetishes," which are both supernatural spirits and also the power of those spirits embodied in a physical object of some kind, and you will find many fetish stories here in the reading. There are also stories of human drama and family conflict, often centered on rivalry among wives or rivalry among brothers. Finally, there are animal stories as well, including the story of how spider sought to retrieve the heavenly fire of Nzambi Mpungu, the supreme god, in order to win himself a bride.

Language. These stories are told in modern English prose, so the language used should pose no difficulties.

Story Length. These are all single-page stories.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: Stories from Congo. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

READING A:

READING B:

(fetishes, photo by H.J.L. Bennett)

Myth-Folklore Unit: African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books

Overview. These stories are drawn from the fairy books of Andrew Lang (with accompanying audio if you would like to listen to the stories read aloud), and they cover a range of traditions. The wonderful story of little Motiktatika and the ogre is a Ba-Ronga story from southern Africa, while the stories of the trickster jackal come from the Berbers of northern Africa. There are also Swahili stories from eastern Africa like the tale of "Hassebu and the King of the Snakes" and "The Monkey and the Shark." The final story in the selection is a hero legend from Zimbabwe about the mighty Makoma, who defeated the earth giant Chi-dubula-taka, the forest giant Chi-gwisa-miti, the fire-eating giant Chi-idea-moto, and the river giant Chin-debou Mau-giri, before his final battle with the five-headed monster Sakatirina.

Language. These stories are told in modern English prose, so the language used should pose no difficulties.

Story Length. These are mostly longer stories, two or three pages in length. There are eight stories total, and one of those is a double story where one tale is told inside another one.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: African Stories from Lang's Fairy Books. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

Free audiobooks available:

Grey -Violet - Crimson - Orange - Lilac

READING A:

READING B:

Myth-Folklore Unit: Brer Rabbit

Overview. Joel Chandler Harris's series of books of Brer Rabbit tales (almost two hundred stories in total) is one of the most important resources we have for African-American folklore study, yet the stories are also difficult to work with. Harris invented a storyteller whom he called "Uncle Remus," and he presents Uncle Remus telling the stories to a little white boy. I have removed the Uncle Remus frame from the stories, and I have also standardized the spelling, removing what is called the "eye-dialect," but I have not standardized the grammar or vocabulary; the stories are told in the English spoken by African Americans in the southern U.S., specifically in Georgia, which is where Harris collected the stories, mostly during the 1870s and 1880s.

Language. You will probably find the stories much easier to read if you read them to yourself out loud. There are also recordings available from LibriVox, although they have the Uncle Remus frame material, so they do not match up exactly, especially at the beginning and the end of the stories.

Story Length. These are all single-page stories.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: Brer Rabbit I. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

Free audiobook available!

READING A:

READING B:

(illustration by A. B. Frost)

Myth-Folklore Unit: More Brer Rabbit

Overview. Like the other Brer Rabbit unit, this unit is based on the African-American folktales collected by Joel Chandler Harris in late 19th-century Georgia (see that overview for more information). The stories in the first unit all came from Joel Chandler Harris's first book of Brer Rabbit stories, published in 1880, while the stories in this unit come from Uncle Remus and Brer Rabbit, published in 1907, along with other books of Brer Rabbit stories published by Harris. As before, I have removed the Uncle-Remus frametale for the stories, and I have also removed the eye-dialect, standardizing the spelling but without altering the dialect.

Language. You will probably find the stories much easier to read if you read them to yourself out loud. There are also recordings available from LibriVox for each story!

Story Length. These are all single-page stories.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: More Brer Rabbit. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

Free audiobooks available:

Brer Rabbit - Uncle Remus

READING A:

READING B:

(Brer Rabbit and Brer Lion)

Myth-Folklore Unit: Jamaica Anansi Stories

Overview. The trickster Spider Anansi is a famous folklore figure in West Africa, and slaves abducted from West Africa brought the stories of Anansi with them to the Americas. This book of Jamaica Anansi Stories contains stories collected in Jamaica during the early years of the 20th century by Martha Warren Beckwith, a professor of folklore and well-known ethnographer. Beckwith recorded the stories in dialect as told to her by Jamaican storytellers. She also used variant spelling to try to record their pronunciation. I have removed the variant spelling, but the stories are still in Jamaican dialect. My advice: read the stories out loud so that you can get used to what the dialect is like. The stories are also highly oral, without complex sentences (such as this one!) that are typical of written language. So, that's another good reason to read the stories out loud, getting a sense of how these storytellers express themselves.

Language. In addition to standardizing the spelling, I've also glossed the unfamiliar dialect words, so it should be not too hard to understand. If you have questions, let me know and I can add some more glosses and commentary to the stories.

Story Length. These are all single-page stories; some of them are very short stories, so that you will find two separate stories on a single page.

Navigation. You will find the table of contents below, and you can also use this link to see the story posts displayed on two pages total: Jamaican Anansi Stories. Click "Older Posts" at the bottom of that page to see the second page.

READING A:

READING B:

(mango tree)

Pages