African Folktales at Internet Archive: Scheub's African Storyteller

Yesterday I wrote about an anthology of African stories by Paul Radin who was one of the leading anthropologists in the first half of the 20th century, and today I want to write about one of the leading anthropologists in the second half of the 20th century: Harold Scheub, who was born in 1931 and who died very recently, in 2019. You can read about his life and career at Wikipedia. There are several of his books available at Internet Archive based on his work in southern Africa which I will feature in later posts, but the book for today is the anthology that he edited of stories from all across Africa: The African Storyteller: Stories from African Oral Traditions. The book is just a click away at the Internet Archive. 

The book has actually appeared in two different editions; the edition at the Internet Archive is from 1990, and the edition I have is from 1999, but the books are fundamentally the same (there are a few stories that are different, but the overall organization is the same; you can compare them here). The stories are organized thematically, with introductory materials to each section about the theme, along with notes and commentary on each story. If you are thinking of buying a used copy of the book (which are widely available because the book was commonly used as a college textbook), either edition is good!

In addition to the 50 stories in the book, there are wonderful little insets throughout the book where Scheub quotes passages from other scholars and researchers who study African storytelling traditions, like this passage from A. C. Jordan, whose book Tales from Southern Africa I had featured here a few weeks ago:

The stories come mostly from published sources in English, but there are a dozen stories that come from non-English sources, including some translations from oral performances, including two extraordinary stories that Scheub recorded: the Zulu story of the trickster Chakijana, and the Xhosa story of the hero Sikhuluma (the roles of the hero and the trickster were Scheub's special areas of interest). 

Scheub also includes photographs from those storytelling sessions, like this photograph of Nongenile Masithathu Zenani, a Xhosa storyteller, whose work appears in this book edited by Scheub: The World and the Word: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral Tradition, available at Internet Archive also.

I'll have more to say about Scheub's work with Xhosa storytellers in future posts, and with this anthology he does a brilliant job of sketching a framework for the larger dimensions of the storytelling traditions across the African continent: HIGHLY recommended.

The African Storyteller:

Stories from African Oral Traditions

by Harold Scheub