The World and the Word: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral TraditionA master storyteller of the Xhosa people of South Africa, Nongenile Masithathu Zenani gives us an unprecedented view of an oral society from within. Twenty-four of her complex and beautiful tales about birth, puberty, marriage, and work, as told to the renowned collector of African oral tradition, Harold Scheub, are gathered here. Accompanying the stories are Zenani’s detailed commentaries and analyses and Scheub’s striking photographs of her in performance. The combination of these historical and cultural observations with a richly symbolic collection of tales from a single traditional storyteller make The World and the Word a remarkable document. |
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... story is to be discovered in the altera- tions . In other stories , a variety of patterns will interact with each other to produce meaning . As stories become more involved , the images themselves are not repeated in any obvious way ...
... story is a variation of a common African story about a good girl who is contrasted with a bad girl . In the simplest version of this tale , a good girl has a series of challenging experiences and responds to them positively ; she is ...
... story of marital infidelity , has to do with a young woman who is created from a tree by a lonely man . When he drives a nail into the carefully prepared tree , the tree becomes a beautiful woman . The first part of the story tells of ...
Contents
The Art of the Storyteller | 7 |
Masithathu Zenani on Storytelling | 19 |
Tales | 27 |
Copyright | |
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