The Transmission Of Kapsiki Higi Folktales Over Two Generations

Download or read book The Transmission of Kapsiki-Higi Folktales over Two Generations written by Walter E.A. van Beek and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study on Kapsiki-Higi tales compares two corpuses of stories collected over two generations. In this oral setting, folktales appear much more dynamic than usually assumed, depending on genre, performance and the memory characteristics of the tales themselves. In northeastern Nigeria the author collected these tales twice with a time gap of two generations, in order to assess the dynamics of this oral transmission. The comparison between the two corpuses shows that folktales are a much more dynamic cultural system than is usually thought. These dynamics affect some types of tales more than others, reflect social change and intergroup contact, but also depend on characteristics of the tales themselves. Cognitive approaches of memory shed light on these varieties of transmission, as do performance aspects in tale telling, in particular ideophones.