African Folktales at Internet Archive: The Ibonia Epic from Madagascar

Last week I focused on mostly children's books with beautiful illustrations, and this week I want to shift the focus to important scholarly publications that you can find at the Internet Archive, starting with How to Read a Folktale: The Ibonia Epic from Madagascar by Lee Haring.

The Ibonia epic comes from the island of Madagascar, and this book presents Haring's English translation of the epic along with detailed commentary. 

The story was first recorded in writing in the 1870s, and was told for unknown centuries before being written down. Ibonia is a hero on a rescue mission. using both strength and wisdom to rescue his betrothed. It's a mixture of folktale elements that might remind you of a fairy tale but on an epic scale. You can get a sense of the scope of the hero's adventure from this list of section titles in the book's table of contents: There Is No Child ~ Her Quest for Conception ~ The Locust Becomes a Baby ~ The Baby Chooses a Wife and Refuses Names ~ His Quest for a Birthplace ~ Yet Unnamed ~ Refusing Names from Princes ~ The Name for a Perfected Man ~ Power ~ Stone Man Shakes ~ He Refuses More Names ~ Games ~ He Arms Himself ~ He Is Tested ~ He Combats Beast and Man ~ He Refuses Other Wives ~ The Disguised Flayer ~ An Old Man Becomes Stone Man’s Rival ~ Victory: "Dead, I Do Not Leave You on Earth; Living, I Give You to No Man” ~ Return of the Royal Couple ~ Ibonia Prescribes Laws and Bids Farewell.

This is a book from the World Oral Literature project at Open Books Press which means it is available at anytime, not just for digital checkout, and you can also download it directly from the Open Books website with various free download options.

That World Oral Literature project is also where you can find free downloads of Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa which I have written about previously at this blog.

It is also home to Storytelling in Northern Zambia: Theory, Method, Practice and Other Necessary Fictions by Robert Cancel, a book which has not been uploaded to the Internet Archive, but which you can download directly at Open Books. Cancel's book is also accompanied by a series of YouTube videos; for example, here is Tabwa storyteller Stanley Kalumba:

There are other great books at the World Oral Literature project, and you will find Haring's book at Internet Archive, just a click away and available anytime, not just for digital checkout:

How to Read a Folktale:
The Ibonia Epic from Madagascar
by Lee Haring