Introduction to African Oral Literature and Performance » (New Edition)

Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah, Ph.D., has taught African performance, African and African Diaspora literature, folklore and comparative poetics in Nigeria, Canada and the United States. Among his books are Ogoni's Agonies, Almajiri, and The People's Poet: Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare.

Bayo Ogunjimi, Ph.D., deceased in 1996, was a professor of African oral literature and English at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria. His critical essays have appeared in journals around the world.

This new book puts together in a single cover, two earlier volumes by the authors, now revised to meet the challenges of a twenty-first century scholarship in African performance and cultural studies. Topics covered range from sources of African oral traditions, relevance of cosmology to African oral performance, fieldwork practice and research methodology, archetypes, folktales, myths and legends, performance and stylistic features, to various areas of poetic performances like praise poetry, religious poetry, topical, occupational and heroic poetry, their performances and more.

The central theme of the book is performance, and students, scholars and readers are provided with projects and exercises intended to keep them involved in research and performance experience of the oral forms. Teaching and curriculum development suggestions are given to teachers of African oral performances. Important information is provided to guide researchers into a continued exciting experience in the study of and research into African oral traditions.

Materials are included from a good number of languages and cultures of Africa including Yoruba, Hausa, Nupe, among others, so that students would be able to explore these important examples as testimony of the richness of the scholarly and cultural resources in African oral traditions.