The Limba of Sierra Leone with special reference to their folktales or oral literature

Thesis



The thesis la an annotated edition of Limba folktales or "oral literature". This is unusual In recent British anthropology in spite of the earlier interest in the subject, mainly because of the reaction against evolutionism, and the more recent structuralist and functionalist approach. Various approaches to folktales and myth are laid aside as irrelevant or unhelpful. The senses in which linguistic, structural and, in particular, sociological approaches are relevant to the present study are discussed, and various criticisms made of the narrowness or misleading implications of the more recent "sociological" attitudes to oral literature in non-literate societies. The present approach is to treat suoh material as having the status of literature ("oral literature"), rather than as being in some way utilitarian, and to relate the stories to their social background, discuss their contents, categories, delivery, and narrators systematically, and discover something of what they mean to those telling and hearing them.

Authors: Finnegan, R; Finnegan, Ruth

• Publication date: 1963
• DOI: 10.5287/ora-qyqanxon6
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Subjects: Tales; Sierra Leone; Limba (African people); Folklore; Storytelling