African Oral Literature

This book is designed and written to promote the public understanding of African Oral traditions as the foundation of African people’s culture, beliefs and values and their basis of their socialisation, philosophy and morality. Secondly, it is to provide a means for the effective teaching of the subject. Now in its Fourth Edition, Introduction to Africa Oral Literature is an established and popular textbook for students and lecturers alike. It provides a lively, clear and comprehensive introduction to Folktales, Myths, Songs, Epic Narratives and Legends which are major forms of Oral-aural artistic representation in traditional African societies in which they are utilized in the daily rites of life. The communicative resources, conventions, forms and symbolisms through which these oral genres are transmitted tend to be ignored and devalued in our neo-western literary critical tradition and aesthetics.