Product details
- ISBN 9781032613420
- Weight: 450g
- Dimensions: 174 x 246mm
- Publication Date: 25 May 2026
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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African Oral Literature: An Introduction guides us from the very beginnings of African oral traditions, through the whole range of theories and contexts, and right up to the modern technological age.
This comprehensive and engaging textbook covers the key concepts and methodologies behind the history, formation, delivery, and performance of oral literature. Folktales, proverbs, rhetoric, jokes, poetry, and theatre are explored in turn, before looking at compositional techniques, artistry, education, characterisation, and cosmology. The final part of the book investigates the interplay between oral traditions and technology such as social media in the twenty-first century. Drawing on traditional African pedagogy, the book weaves in African metaphors, rhetorical styles and performance modes, aiming for readers to imbibe African orality rhetoric page by page.
With key questions, exercises and further reading helping to guide readers at the end of each chapter, this book is the perfect introduction to the study of African oral literature.
Abdul-Rasheed Na’Allah was formerly Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive, Professor of English, Comparative Oral Poetics and Performance, University of Abuja, Federal Capital Territory, Nigeria. He’s the author of African Discourse in Islam, Oral Traditions, and Performance (Routeldge, 2010); Yoruba Oral Tradition in Islamic Nigeria (Routledge, 2020), among others.
