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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Analytical boundaries in the oral narrative
Author:Okpewho, I.
Year:1980
Periodical:Bulletin de l'Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire, Série B: Sciences humaines
Volume:42
Issue:4
Pages:822-856
Language:English
Geographic term:Subsaharan Africa
Subject:folk tales
Abstract:Despite the fact that since the 1960s, native scholars have been giving full attention to oral literature both for its evidential and its literary values, a definitive system of analytical categories under which to discuss the various aspects of that literature has still not been evolved. The necessity for clarity in discussions has led scholars like Vladimir Propp and Claude Levi-Strauss to propose clear-cut, cross-cultural taxonomies that would aid the classification of oral narrative data. African scholars should follow their example. It would then become possible, using African material, to draw proper analytical lines, at a cross-cultural level, between the various types of oral narrative. Essential criteria for this classification could be identified; a continuum could be evolved which would help to see the interrelationships between types; and, ultimately, the true meaning of myth would be liberated from an age-old scholastic confusion. This lends greater unity and certainty to the discipline of oral literary scholarship than is likely to be achieved from the work of those who preach fragmentation and despair. Graph., notes, sum. (also in French).
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