The scramble for African orature
The transcription, compilation, and marketing of African oral narratives in the Oxford Library of African Literature, 1964 to 1979
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2179126 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniele Nunziata (0000-0003-0448-5757) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 469-481 |
| Publication date | 2017-07-04 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2017.1307258 |
| OpenAlex | W2605316730 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 21 |
This article examines the dynamic between orature and written literatures, a paradigm which, in colonial literary contexts, has been articulated through problematic dichotomies accrediting writing with superior cultural and literary value. Its case study is the Oxford Library of African Literature, edited in the mid-20th century by anthropologists E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Godfrey Lienhardt and W.H. Whiteley, who organized the transcription, translation, and publication of oral narratives from across Africa as hardback books. The first two volumes were commissioned with sponsorship from UNESCO, but few volumes included contributions from academics from Africa – notwithstanding Chinua Achebe's foreword for the first. By engaging with a rarely scrutinized literary collection, this article suggests that literarity is ultimately a colonialist construct and that orature, within this period, is only valued as gaining cultural capital as literature following its transcription and translation into English by British agents consecrating it into the model of the English book
African studies · Art · Colonialism · Dichotomy · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Sociology · Transcription (linguistics · Anthropology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Translation Studies and Practices · History · Philosophy
The interface between the written and the oral
Creating Postcolonial Literature
The Postcolonial Exotic
The Anthropology of Texts, Persons and Publics
The field of cultural production
Descolonitzar la ment
Orality and Literacy
Outline of a Theory of Practice
Post-Colonial Studies
The Rules of Art
Remembering a Legend
A Continent Learns to Tell its Story at Last
Imagined communities
African Prose Vols. 1 & 2, Somali Poetry, The Heroic Recitations of the Bahima of Ankole
African Oral Literature
Culture and Imperialism
| Highly cited | No |
|---|