Epic Of Sundiata Full Text __HOT__
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This book presents a project to create a reliable, accessible [End Page 93] version of the ancient and classic epic of Son-Jara for all of our readers. My hope is that this edition will serve as a tool for readers to link the ancient texts to the present, and that it will show how reading and listening to the epic has continued to resonate in Africa today. It may even serve as a call to action to begin the process of documenting and circulating the epics of Africa, the oldest great civilizations of the world.
For modernists, the epic represents the original, the archaic. Coming from the oral tradition, epic and the archaism are part of the same tradition. Even though the epic is closer to the muse than the novel, it preserves the same kind of power and force. Like the original oral poetry that preceded the invention of writing, the epic is a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge and moral instruction. This power, when transformed by the writer, becomes narrative drive. The epic has proved an excellent starting point to consider the potential of African literature. The richness of the oral tradition has, in fact, set the stage for the complex emergence of modern literature. Literature in the West, by contrast, has largely developed in a literate mode. Even when written, it has typically been disconnected from the oral tradition. A return to the epic, which in African literature sets the stage for literary experimentation, may be the most appropriate vehicle for the West to understand and embrace the African experience. The [End Page 92] epics are a rich, almost inexhaustible source of material to address questions about the complexity of African culture, the history of the West, and the present state of our world.
The oral tradition is the most complex and difficult of all art forms to communicate. The epic requires a creative approach to its comprehension, a respect for the narratives it contains, and a willingness to consider the social role of the storytellers.
In addition to the published epic of Sunjata, we have the oral epic of Malinke (Bambara) called Yaku-Dako, a text of over forty-five hundred lines which is still living. Besides illustrating the oral epic tradition, it is a testimony to the power of a spoken narrative tradition to survive the loss of the last griots. Yaku-Dako has been collected, transcribed and translated by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and forms an appendix to his best-selling, The Nuer, published by Oxford University Press in 1940. Yaku-Dako's narrative structure is simple; it begins with a few brief lines and then proceeds to a description of the woes of the people. It is a story of suffering and a history of heroic deeds performed in order to overcome it. 827ec27edc