Transcribing tales, creating cultural identities: an analysis of selected written English texts of Xhosa folktales (2025)

What is a South African folktale?: Reshaping traditional tales through translation and adaptation

2004

He arrived at home and it said, 'No! Let me go! I in a bird that shits amasi!'' He said, "Please shit, that we may see!' It produced some amasi. Oh, the man tasted it, he tasted it. He ate it. (Scheub 1977. p. 47) 'Kelhani. don i harm me If you spare my life, I II make milk foryou. ' AndKethani watchedas the weeds became uprooted and then ordered the bird to make milk for him. He took out a calabash and the bird filled it with thick warm milk. Kethani savoured the milk as it slithered down his dry throat It had been a very long time since he had tasted milk.

The construction of gender through the narrative process of the African folktale: a case study of the Maragoli folktale

2009

Wangila Barasa who enabled me to travel to South Africa for library research. He has also closely monitored my progress. Many thanks go to my family members for their patience and encouragement. My wife Miriam Kenyani and my children Midika, Kabaji, Kilavuka Kagai and Bahati: all, in their own small ways, fired my imagination. Finally, I must thank my late mother, Loice Kagai, and father, Mzee Kabaji and the many performers throughout Maragoli land who gave me their time, thoughts and ideas as I collected data.

Stories and Stances: Cross-Cultured Encounters with African Folktales

Foreign Language Annals, 1995

This paper describes a recent initiative to incorporate folktales and legends from Francophone West Africa into a college-level advanced French literary and cultural studies course. Students were asked to keep reading journals to record their reactions to various texts taken from France and francophone West Africa. An analysis o f the reading journals shows that critical competencies in Western culture often do not carry over when students encounter Ah-ican texts. In the same way that students make linguistic errors by translating literally from their native language to the target language, they likewise make critical errors by misapplying critical stances to unfamiliar cultural contexts.

An Analysis of Setswana Folktales from a Gendered Perspective

Southern African Journal for Folklore Studies, 2016

In Botswana, gender is constructed in many different ways including but not limited to the names given to children, the games children play, through songs and proverbs and through messages presented in mainane (folktales). The important role that folktales play in the socialisation process of members of a society is well documented. Like in most societies, mainane play many different functions such as being didactic, moralistic, cultural records, therapeutic as well as forms of entertainment. However, this paper focuses on the gendered messages conveyed in Setswana folktales. It discusses how societal expectations of men and women can be understood from Setswana folktales. It further argues that the values transmitted in the folktales have clear ideological goals, and they encourage and perpetuate gender stereotypes between men and women. A few mainane will be analysed from a gender perspective to validate the argument of this paper.

Rethinking Folklore: (Un) answering pertinent questions about folklore studies in Afrika 1

The paper presents a critical analysis of the state of folklore studies in South Afrika. Perceptions among scholars that South Afrika is lagging behind as far as growing folklore into a fully-fledged academic discipline is concerned should, according to a sampled number of articles critiquing folklore from the Afrikan perspective, be a cause for concern. Periodic and intentional debates within the Southern Afrikan Folklore Society (Safos) about the state of folklore seem to fail in unravelling this problem. I propose that folklore studies, even after domesticating it to become Afrikan Folklore Studies, is not suited for Afrikan scholarship. In this article I will advance reasons to prove this point, and further propose that Afrikan folklore should rather become an overarching philosophical underpinning for folkloric genres.

Gender Role Perceptions in Selected South-African Folktales

Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore, 2022

The objective of the study was to unpack gender role perceptions in selected South-African folktales. To this end, 65 purposefully selected folktales which reinforce character roles were analysed and interpreted, using narrative analysis. With the exception of a few that are used as instruments of contestation, the studied South-African folktales mainly serve as a tool to confirm the entrenched hegemonic philosophy of patriarchal communal life in terms of marriage, work, character traits, and authority. The rebelliousness of female characters against the patriarchal system in some folktales indicates that there is an emerging dynamism of discourse which aims at transforming the gender stereotype ideology inculcated in the folktales.

Introduction to Orality in African Literature

Therefore, what counts most in the final analysis is the beneficial effect of traditional literature upon the audience (readers or listeners); and whether that effect brings about moral, cultural, social or political transformation.

Folktales and interculturality in Africa The Ugandan case

2010

Among those writers who were influenced by the oral tradition of their respective countries, Okot p'Bitek is certainly the most involved in pondering on ways to save African oral culture from oblivion. In this paper, I propose to discuss within the question of intercultural discourses how this playwright and poet went round the difficult task of collecting and rewriting oral tales in a continent deconstructed by the colonial system. Interestingly, the term which I shall be using throughout this presentation is 'Orature', a literary expression coined by the Ugandan linguist Pio Zirimu and popularized by the Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngugi Wa Thiong'O in his literary essays. The regional origin of the term orature is worth stressing here as I am examining the way the Ugandan Okot p'Bitek has worked on the transcription and recovery of East African oral tales. As a matter of fact, the influence of orality on literature is particularly significant in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya where writers and storytellers integrated their traditional oral culture in their written works, making it their duty to stress the value of their East African heritage, especially in the 70's and 80's. In his thought-provoking Decolonising the Mind, 1 Ngugi proposes a definition of orality as being a language which has "a dual character: being both a means of communication and a carrier of culture" 2. Most African intellectuals percieve orality as being certainly a "total aesthetic system" 3 , naturally connected to African literary studies. The transfer of past oral culture in today's reconstruction of Africa is surely significant in every part of the African continent. If Okot p'Bitek is mostly known for

Weak or Wily? Girls’ Voices in Tellings and Retellings of African Folktales for Children

Children's Literature in Education

Female characters in many African folktales are often perceived as voiceless and peripheral, playing the role of passive advisors and nurturers in contrast to the physically stronger and more active male characters. Some African scholars have disagreed with this perception, asserting that the female characters are stronger than their male counterparts. In this article I examine the voice and agency of female protagonists in selected retellings of folktales. The aim is to determine the extent to which retellings contest or perpetuate conventions and assumptions about girls and women, and whether the increasing globalisation of these folktales is enhancing the agency of female protagonists and challenging patriarchal paradigms. My analysis suggests that retellings by black female authors and storytellers are more innovative and demonstrate more resistance to patriarchal structures than those by white authors which may have been influenced by the idea of a traditional European folk or fairy tale. Folktales have the potential to effect change in dominant attitudes, and to encourage critical awareness of embedded ideological patterns. To this end, female African storytellers show an ability to retell stories and mould characters in ways that contest the traditional gender roles found in many African folktales.

Folktales as Means of Transmitting Knowledge on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Nigeria: The Adventure of Akuye in Iyuku Community of Edo State

African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, 2009