ORAL LITERATURE IN AFRICA

<p><span style=color: rgba(55 65 81 1)>Welcome to this 2025 Third Edition of the songs and stories of Africa - some of them that is for their voices are legion and they are still singing.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(55 65 81 1)>Ruth Finnegan's Oral Literature in Africa was first published in 1970 and since then has been widely praised as one of the most important books in its field. Based on years of fieldwork the study traces the history of storytelling across the continent of Africa. This edition makes Finnegan's ground-breaking research available to the next generation of scholars. It includes an introduction as well as its original chapters on poetry prose drum language and drama and an overview of the social linguistic and historical background of oral literature in Africa.</span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(55 65 81 1)>Ruth thanks Callender Press and especially John Hunt (layout artist and cartographer) for sending forth this new edition of the now old but I see still green Oral literature in Africa. But I wonder whether perhaps it is no longer needed not that is in the same way. For as the wheels of the great world turn and the words will dwell for ever they do not by now have to be heard under an Africa title. For Africa is no longer a marginal or extreme or exotic othered section of the globe but an accepted and loved part of our many-peopled sounding scintillating world a dear part of us all. The voices may sometimes be partly veiled and unrecognised but they are always there. They are shared and sharing with us all no longer separate. Long may you live great songs and stories and sayings of Africa no longer shining under a foreign far colonial sun but now here a full accepted part of the great everlasting heritage of all nations.</span></p><p></p><h4><span style=background-color: rgba(243 244 246 1); color: rgba(17 24 39 1)>Additional Resources</span></h4><p><span style=background-color: rgba(243 244 246 1); color: rgba(17 24 39 1)>This volume is complemented by original recordings of stories and songs from the Limba country (Sierra Leone) collected by Finnegan during her fieldwork in the late 1960s.</span></p>