Western criticism has largely failed to acknowledge the distinctiveness of African literary aesthetics. This book revises traditional literary canons in examini

The feats of the hero Mwindo are here glorified in the bilingual text of an epic which was sung and narrated in a Bantu language and acted out by a member of th

The son of Sogolon, the hunchback princess, and Maghan, known as "the handsome", Sundiata grew up to fulfill the prophesies of the soothsayers that he would uni

A broad range of cultural works produced in traditional and modern African communities shows a fundamental preoccupation with the concepts of communal solidarit

To protect their identity and values, Africans enslaved in America transformed various familiar character types to create folk heroes who offered models of beha