African Folktale Research Articles

Hyène, monture de Lièvre (vingt versions d'un conte africain)

D. Paulme — When Hare Rides Hyena, Twenty Versions of an African Folktale. The theme/motif of the Deceiver/ Trickster deceiving a powerful partner/foe and riding him publicly is mentioned twice in Thompson's catalogue. A comparative analysis of twenty African versions leads to a distinction based upon the ultimate fate of the deceived character rather than upon the ruse used by the Deceiver (the latter distinction being that used by Thompson). In the African versions the relevant opposition is between the cases when the victim (Hyena) is punished for his glutony and those when the Deceiver intends to ridicule or belittle either physical (Elephant) or political (Leopard) superiority.

The Possibility of Measure in Olson's Maximus

In an African folktale to which Charles Olson often refers, the personified Way, the ritual leader, dies. He writes: Value is perishing from the earth because no one cares to fight down to it beneath the glowing surface so attractive to all. Der Weg Stirbt (HU, 8). The Way attends all ceremonies in which consciousness is transformed, in which passage is made, in which new coherence is found. To follow the Way is to explore consciousness uncritically, perhaps, from the point of view of ego, even stupidly, to its extremities. It provides a key to the labyrinth and the formulae by which the symbolic manifestations of the Earth as devouring mother, whether she is represented as grave or underworld, as hell or Maya, as heimarmene or fate, as monster or witch,1 is overcome. The difficulties in Olson's work are all problems of the Way, of methodology, metahodos, the way after (BOA, 9). The connection between the Way and the method are everywhere present in the Maximus. Olson sees himself standing at the potential end of an arc of history which had already begun in 500 B.C., when Heraclitus said, Man is estranged from that with which he is most familiar. Olson refers to this dictum in Maximus, to Himself (M, 52), and takes it as an epigraph for Special View of History (SVH, 14). It is his shorthand symbol for the

Further Adventures of Hyena and Rabbit: The Folktale as a Sociological Model

Opening ParagraphIn a previous article published in this journal analysed one East African folktale in terms of its sociological significance. In this article I present a second, similar tale which deals with the same characters and which provides additional illustration of some of the points I tried to make in my earlier work.This folktale is in Chikaguru, the language spoken by the Kaguru, a matrilineal Bantu people living in northern Kilosa and Mpwapwa Districts. The Kaguru have cultural traditions similar to those of other matrilineal peoples in this region of Tanganyika, such as the Luguru, Ngulu, Zigua, Sagara, and others. They are organized into about ioo non-localized, exogamous matri-clans (ikungugo or lukolo), each of which is divided into many matrilineages which cannot actually trace common descent. Traditionally, political rights over land and rights to perform certain ceremonies of rainmaking, purification, and fertility descend to men through women. The traditional system has been greatly disrupted and changed by colonial rule, missionary activity, and the introduction of a market economy, but this has little relevance to the significance of the material discussed in this paper, which is concerned primarily with the traditional system.