African Folktales at Internet Archive: African Mythology

Finishing up this week of reference works, here's another overview of African mythology, just a click away at Internet Archive: African Mythology: An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend by Jan Knappert.

Jan Knappert did fieldwork in African starting in the late 1950s and through the late 1980s; this book was published in 1990. His own specialty was Swahili languages and literature; you can read more about him at Wikipedia. The book takes a story-focused approach (myth and legend), as you can see here in start of the Yoruba entry. 

Unfortunately, there is no bibliography for the individual entries, and only a brief bibliography is included in the back of the book.

The illustrations are by Elizabeth Knappert as inspired by African artworks. For A, there are Ashanti fertility figures:

For B a Bambara head-dress from Mali:

And so on, up until the final drawing for the letter Z, a rhinoceros head-rest from Zambia:

This book is part of a series which also includes Part of a series: Indian Mythology and Pacific Mythology, both by Knappert, plus British and Irish Mythology by John and Catilin Matthews (not available at Internet Archive), Chinese Mythology by Derek Walters, Dictionary of Festivals  by J. C. Cooper, Native American Mythology (not available at Internet Archive) by Page Bryant and Greeek Mythology by Richard Stoneman.

The books are not really reference works (scanty bibliography), but they make for enjoyable reading, and then you can explore stories and topics of interest to you by looking for yet more books at Internet Archive!

African Mythology:

An Encyclopedia of Myth and Legend

by Jan Knappert

African Folktales at Internet Archive: African Mythology

Continuing on with the theme of general reference books this weeks, I wanted to share the African volume from the series, Library of the World's Myths and Legends: African Mythology by Geoffrey Parrinder, just a click away at the Internet Archive:

The book was first published in 1967, and this is the revised edition of 1982. The book is organized thematically: The Creator, God Leaves the World, The First Ancestors, The Mystery of Birth, The Origins of Death, The World Beyond, Gods and Spirits, Oracles and Divination, Witches and Monsters, Secret Societies and Ancestors, Legends of Old Africa, and Animal Fables (you know I am glad he decided to include that). There's also a brief bibliography for further reading in the back.

The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs, both black-and-white and in color, of African artwork. The front cover shows a sacred python on wooden bowl, Yoruba, and the back cover shows a terracotta family group by an Igbo artist:

Here's a photograph of San cave art from Zimbabwe:

And this is a Benin bronze from Nigeria depicting a cow sacrifice:

Parrinder has published other books on African religion, some of which you can find at the Internet Archive: African Traditional Religion, Religion in Africa, Religion in an African City, Africa's Three Religions, West African Religion, West African Psychology, along with other books on comparative world religions.

The focus in Parrinder's book is sub-Saharan Africa, and I also want to share the book in this series about the mythology of Egypt in north Africa: Egyptian Mythology by Veronica Ions:

The Internet Archive actually has all 18 books in this excellent series. I'll write up a separate blog post with links to all of them; for now, here's a quick link to my Diigo bookmarks for the other 16 books in this series beyond Egypt and Africa.

Meanwhile, for today, two beautiful books about the mythological traditions of the African continent:

African Mythology

by Geoffrey Parrinder

Egyptian Mythology

by Veronica Ions

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions

Yesterday I shared African Folklore: An Encyclopedia, and today I want to share another A to Z type of project, but it is not a big reference work; instead, it is a children's book, beautifully illustrated by Leo and Diane Dillon: Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions by Margaret Musgrove, just a click away at the Internet Archive.

There are not folktales in this book, but it is a wonderful way to bring to life some of the peoples who tell those folktales, and of course these are just a few of the many hundreds of African cultures: Ashanti, Baule, Chagga, Dogon, Ewe, Fanti, Ga, Hausa, Ikoma, Jie, Kung, Lozi, Masai, Ndaka, Ouadai, Pondo, Quimbande, Rendille, Sotho, Tuareg, Uge, Vai, Wagenia, Xhosa, Yoruba, and Zulu. So, if any of those names are new to you, that means you will learn something from this book. 

Thanks to the gorgeous artwork by the Dillons, this book was a Caldecott Medal winner in 1977, and was the recipient of many other awards. Every detail in the illustrations is carefully chosen, as you can see in this note from the book's introduction: "The interwoven design at the corners of each frame is based on the Kano Knot, which symbolizes endless searching, a design originally used in the then-flourishing city of Kano in northern Nigeria during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."

Here is the page about the Hausa people:

The Jie:

The Lowzi:

All the pages are so beautiful!

I've written about the Dillons before; you can see all the posts about them on one page, with each of these books just a click away at Internet Archive:

This A-to-Z book is a wonderful addition to that collection of books illustrated by the Dillons:

Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions

by Margaret Musgrove

African Folktales at Internet Archive: African Folklore: An Encyclopedia

For this week, I am focusing on reference books (see all this week's posts on one page), and the book I want to feature today is this extraordinary reference project: African Folklore: An Encyclopedia edited by Philip Peek and Kwesi Yankah, just a click away at Internet Archive.

This is a recent book, published in 2004, and as typical with books from Routledge, it is incredibly expensive: I know, because I bought a copy; that was before the great Internet Archive came to the rescue with "controlled digital lending" so that you can now check this book out online and have access to the book right in your own home at any time that you need it.

In addition, this book has the advantage of electronic search at Internet Archive so that, in addition to using the organizational tools provided by the physical book, you can also search electronically. My main interest is tricksters, so I am able to search for trickster in the Internet Archive version, and then browse the book that way (and it's a BIG book, over 600 pages), moving from one entry to the next; there are over 100 hits for trickster in the book:

The list of contributors is also extremely valuable since you can use that list of names to search for other books at Internet Archive and/or for used books at Abe, and each article contains its own list of references which is also great for finding more to read:

So, for an endless source of learning and for leads about where to learn more, I cannot say enough good things about this book: highly HIGHLY recommended!

African Folklore: An Encyclopedia

edited by Philip Peek and Kwesi Yankah

African Folktales at Internet Archive: Dictionary of African Mythology

After yesterday's post about African Mythology A to Z, I wanted to follow up with another A-to-Z book: A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller by Harold Scheub, just a click away at Internet Archive.

Scheub has collected 400 African stories in this book, arranged alphabetically by the first name of the story's protagonist. The stories are told in summary form, highly readable, with information about the cultural and geographical provenance of each story, as you can see in this screenshot of a Lamba story from Zambia: Kabunda, Whose Mother Brought Fire.

This is a wonderful book to browse through, and you can also use it as a reference book, especially since the Internet Archive version is searchable. So, for example, if you want to see all the Nigerian stories in the book, you can do that by searching:

There is also a monumental bibliography in the back of the book, running to over 25 pages, along with indexes and appendices with the myths listed by country, by language and culture, and by themes and motifs. The thematic index is the most useful since that's not something a computer-based search can generate. Unlike traditional tale type and motif indexes, Scheub has organized this index based on what he sees as the "grand myth" and its features: Beginnings - First Connections (between heaven and earth) - Separation - Struggle between God and Man - Second Connections - Endings.

This book was a labor of love for Harold Scheub, one of the great 20th-century scholars of African storytelling. I've written about other books of his in previous posts: The African Storyteller: Stories from African Oral Traditions and The World and the Word: Tales and Observations from the Xhosa Oral Tradition. 

So, find a book by Harold Scheub and plunge in. There is a wealth of stories in these books, each jus ta click away at Internet Archive.

A Dictionary of African Mythology:

The Mythmaker as Storyteller

by Harold Scheub

African Folktales at Internet Archive: African Mythology A to Z

Thanks to a suggestion from @MythicAfricans (a must-follow Twitter account for African art and stories), I'm going to spend this week looking at some useful African reference books that are available at Internet Archive, starting with African Mythology A to Z by Patricia Ann Lynch, just a click away, both the first edition of 2004 and the second edition published in 2010.

Patricia Lynch is also the author of a similar project for Native American traditions which you can also find at Internet Archive: Native American mythology A to Z.

Both of these volumes are designed for a general audience in mind, with short entries; the entire African mythology book is just 168 pages in the first edition, 176 pages in the second edition. So, unlike an encyclopedia written for specialized research scholars, this is actually a book you might read just for pleasure. The entries are highly readable, and there are many photographs included, as you can see in this screenshot of the thumbnail view at Internet Archive:

There are not references provided in the individual entries, but there is a bibliography in the back, and of course you will be able to find many of the books in that bibliography at Internet Archive too.

There is also an index, but one of the best things about using a digital book online is that in addition to the printed index, you can search the text and browse through the text by advancing from one search results to the next to the next. So, for example, searching on "tortoise" helps me to find the entry for Mokele, which includes a story featuring the tortoise as a character:

So, this is definitely a reference book that is worth bookmarking, and it's also a nice book just to read, with many stories in the entries to learn about and enjoy!

African Mythology A to Z

by Patricia Ann Lynch