Gender-Role Perceptions in the Akan Folktale

Abstract

The vital role that the folktale plays in the process of socialization in society has been recognized by critics like Bruno Bettelheim who provides insight into the pedagogical value of fairy tales. Usually in the primary oral culture the folktale constitutes a major, early source for the liberation of the imagination. Built largely on fantasy, the tale has therapeutic, emotional, and cathartic usefulness as well as didactic functions. This literary art form provides a passageway through which society confirms its strengths and growth strategies, while inducting new generations into its life-flow. The influence of the tale is felt even more strongly in oral cultures than in those that are script-centered. This paper does not share in Walter Ong's dichotomy between "primary oral" and "chirographic" cultures (16-30). The cultural fusions that take place within and between villages, towns, and suburbs are in reality much more complex than a simple binary division between "oral" and "written." The paper agrees to a limited extent with the manner in which Deborah Tannen marks "orality" because she shows the issue as a flexible strategy for speaking and communicating employed by literate speakers as well (326-47).