Oral Literature in Africa (10 page)

Figure 6. ‘Jellemen’ praise singers and drummers, Sierra Leone (Alexander Gordon Laing
Travels in the Timmannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries,
1825).

As far as the sheer provision of basic sources goes, these German collections are among the most valuable, and their number and quality seem surprisingly underestimated by recent English-speaking writers. Even though their interests were primarily linguistic, and more purely literary or social aspects were little pursued, they established the subject as one worthy of serious study (thus demanding systematic empirical research) and recognized that the texts they recorded were a form of literature.

In the first couple of decades of the twentieth century the study of African oral literature could in some ways be said to have reached its peak as a recognized and closely studied academic subject. Then German interest in Africa waned with the loss of their imperial interests; a number of valuable studies continued to be made by German writers and to appear in scholarly German journals,
¹⁷
but there was no longer the same stimulus to research
and the solid foundations laid earlier were hardly built upon. To some extent the place of the Germans was taken by the South African linguistic school, where there is a strong tradition of informed research in a wide sense;
¹⁸
and Werner’s work in England also resulted in some contact being kept between the German linguistic tradition and the very much weaker English school.
¹⁹
But in general German linguists became isolated from the French and English professional scholars who were now coming to the fore in African studies, concentrating more on aspects of social institutions than on linguistic matters. Much of the earlier ground was therefore lost, and until very recently the study of African oral literature has been relatively neglected as a subject of research in its own right.

II

Various factors have contributed to the relative lack of interest in oral literature in this century. To understand these, it is necessary to include some account of the history of anthropology, for during much of the first half of the twentieth century it was anthropologists who tended to monopolize the professional study of African institutions and culture. The various assumptions of anthropology in this period both directed research into particular fields and also dictated the selection of texts and the particular form in which they were to be recorded.

A number of the theories that held sway at this time were almost fatal to the serious study of oral literature. This so far had fortunately been free from over-speculative theorizing, for in spite of the dominance in some circles of Muller’s particular theories of ‘comparative mythology’, they seem to have had little effect on studies in the field; the general interest in
comparison had thus acted more as a stimulus than as a strait jacket. But the rise first of the evolutionist and diffusionist schools and later of the British structural-functional approach resulted in certain definite limitations being placed on the study of oral art.
²⁰

The evolutionist approach to the study of society, so influential in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was a complex movement that took many different forms. Its central tenets, however, were clear. They included the belief in the concept of unilinear and parallel stages of social and cultural evolution through which all societies must pass; a concentration on the
origins
of any institution as being of the first importance; and, finally, the implicit and evaluative assumption that the direction of evolution was upwards—a progress from the crude communal stage of primitive life towards the civilized and differentiated culture of contemporary Europe. Speculative pseudo-history and totally unverified assumption were asserted as proven fact. Many generalizations too were authoritatively pronounced about how ‘primitive man must have felt’ or ‘probably imagined’, which drew on little more evidence than the writer’s own introspection or his belief that what he most valued in his own, civilized, society were just those elements surely lacking in primitive life. ‘Primitive’, furthermore, was interpreted to mean both early in history (or prehistory) and low and undeveloped generally in the scale of evolution. The stage of development attained by non-literate peoples could thus be equated and evaluated as the same as that once traversed by the prehistoric ancestors of European nations.

This approach clearly has implications for the study of oral literature and in the early twentieth century these were increasingly explored, mainly by scholars writing in England.
²¹
The concentration was on the idea of origins and evolution: questions asked (and confidently answered) concerned which type of literature came first in the prehistory of man, the survivals into the present of more primitive stages of life and culture in the form of
‘folk literature’ or ‘folk-lore’, and the supposed nature of the early primitive stage, still allegedly that of present-day ‘savages’.

Current preconceptions about the nature both of oral literature and of primitive society could be fitted into this conceptual framework. Such literature was, for instance, supposed to be the work of communal consciousness and group authorship rather than, as in civilized communities, of an individual inspired artist; it was handed down word for word ‘from the dim before-time’ or ‘far back ages’, for no individual creativity or imagination could be expected of primitive peoples; it was basically similar among all peoples at the same stage of evolution, so that one could generalize about, say, ‘the primitive’ or ‘the African’ without having to consider the particular history or culture of a given area, much less the individual composer; and finally, although it might ultimately evolve into something higher, at the moment such oral literature was radically different from that of higher civilizations with their emphasis on originality, innovation, and the written word. The exact stage assigned to various non-literate peoples varied, but there was general agreement that most African peoples belonged to an early and low stage, and that their art, if any, would be correspondingly primitive. They were variously described as dominated by the idea of magic, by totemism, or by their failure to distinguish between themselves and the animal world round them. And all these ideas could be presumed to come out in their oral literature or ‘folk-lore’.

These theories were not in fact often applied in detail to African oral literature. Nevertheless, they had a direct effect on its study. First, the evolutionist movement gave an apparently ‘scientific’ validation to certain current prejudices about the nature of oral art which naturally affected the attitude of those working in the field (and has to some extent continued to do so, particularly among those with little first-hand knowledge of unwritten literature).
²²
It has also dictated the selection of oral literature recorded or the kind of interpretation thought suitable. Because such oral literature was ‘communal’, for instance, variant forms were not recorded or looked for and no questions were raised about individual authorship, which was presumed not to exist. Because items of oral literature could also be regarded as
‘survivals’ of yet more primitive stages, an acceptable interpretation would be in terms of hypothetical earlier customs, such as ‘primitive matriarchy’ or ‘totemism’, rather than of its literary effectiveness or acceptability. Because primitive tribes were supposed to be preoccupied with tradition rather than innovation, ‘traditional’ tales were sought and ‘new’ ones ignored or explained away. Because interest was focused on broad evolutionary stages, few questions were asked about the idiosyncratic history, culture, or literary conventions of a particular people. Finally because origins and early history assumed such importance in people’s minds, there was little emphasis on the
contemporary
relevance of a piece of literature, so there seemed every excuse for collecting and publishing bits and pieces without attempting to relate them to their particular social and literary context. The interest of anthropologists was turned away from the systematic collection or analysis of detailed literary texts and concentrated on generalized theory.

The main outlines and many of the details of this approach are now rejected by the majority of professional anthropologists as either false or unproven. But as it was not just a matter of esoteric academic interest but a reflection and apparent validation of many popular views, its rejection by professionals by no means implies the end of its influence. Many of these assumptions can still be found in the writings of non-anthropologists, in particular among some of the self-styled English ‘folklorists’. They have also been lent apparent support by the actual selection and treatment of societies presented to the public.

By the 1930s anthropologists were turning to more empirical and first-hand studies of African societies, with the consequent promise of more systematic collection of oral literature. The so-called structural-functional school of British anthropology, associated in its most rigid form with the name of Radcliffe-Brown, concentrated on
function,
in particular on the function of stabilizing or validating the current order of things. This approach was naturally applied to literature as to other social data. The idea that certain types of oral literature could have a utilitarian role was, of course, not new (e.g. Van Gennep 1910); nor was the related but more extreme hypothesis that, in contrast to the idea of ‘art for art’s sake’ supposedly characteristic of civilized nations, the oral literatures of Africa had a severely practical rather than aesthetic aim. But, while chiming in with these notions, structural-functional anthropology took a particular form of its own. Its central theoretical interest was, at root, the functional integration and maintenance of society: and items of oral literature were regarded as relevant only in so far as they could be fitted into this framework.

The fact that this approach has till recently held sway among British anthropologists—those who in other spheres have made the greatest contribution to the empirical study of African institutions—has several implications for the study of oral literature. Most important is the implicit assumption that oral literature is not worthy of study as a subject in its own right and that it can be ignored except for passing references which fit in with a particular interpretation of society. The result is that over the last generation or so practically no collections or analyses of oral literature have been made by British scholars. When oral literature
was
mentioned, the fashion was to play down the aesthetic aspect in favour of the functional and to stress ‘traditional’ material even to the extent of sometimes refusing to record anything that seemed to smack of innovation. Prose narrative was more often referred to than sung poetry, since it was easier to make a quick record of it and since it was more suitable, particularly in the form of ‘myths’, for use in functional analysis. Altogether the emphasis was on brief synopsis or paraphrase rather than a detailed recording of literary forms as actually delivered. The well-known British tradition of empirical and painstaking field work in Africa has therefore borne little fruit in the field of oral literature. And the dominance of this functional approach, following on the more speculative evolutionist framework of earlier years, helps to explain why the study of oral literature has made so little progress in this century.

The interest in diffusion—the geographical spread of items of material and non-material culture—has also had its repercussions. In both the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, curiosity about the geographical origin and subsequent history of particular stories encountered in different parts of the world has been considerable. This has been most specifically expressed in the Scandinavian or ‘historical-geographical’ school of folklore, which for much of this century has been trying to discover the ‘life history’ of stories of various kinds, by means of systematic classification and an elaborate indexing of comparative references.
²³
This approach is also prevalent in America, where it has to some extent blended with the less ambitious and more liberal diffusionist approaches pioneered by
Boas and his followers.
²⁴
It has had relatively few adherents in Britain, largely because of the dominance of the theories just described, but it has had some wider influence through its association with the international folklore movement.
²⁵

The main consequence of these diffusionist approaches was the focusing of interest on the
subject-matter
of oral literature—for it is this that must be considered when attempting to trace its historical and geographical diffusion.
²⁶
Detailed investigations of the actual social and literary role of forms of oral literature in particular cultures were thus not called for. Similarly there was no onus on collectors to provide laborious and detailed transcriptions when all that was needed was a synopsis of the content: unskilled assistants could be employed to write down ‘texts’ and summaries. The emphasis was naturally on prose tales whose motifs could be traced, and once again attention was focused away from poetry.