Thoth distribution@thoth.pub 20260407T234319

urn:uuid:a94e57a8-fe20-4100-9796-0b8954a57cc8 03 01 01 urn:uuid:a94e57a8-fe20-4100-9796-0b8954a57cc8 15 9781805110064 06 10.11647/OBP.0315 00 EB E107 10 Creative Commons License 02 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 01 01 Folktales of Mayotte, an African Island 1 A01 Lee Haring 2 A23 21 0000-0002-2262-0986 Mark Turin 01 eng 00 198 03 B2 Folklore and Ethnology 04 GR360.M348 12 JFHF 93 JHMC 20 oral narrators 10 SOC002010 93 JBGB 12 JHMC 20 literary skills B2 Literature 10 SOC011000 12 HBTD B2 Other languages 20 versatility B2 African Studies 20 small African island B2 Anthropology 20 French ethnographer 20 interview 20 1970s-80s 20 ancient values 20 preservation 20 postcolonial world 20 island of Mayotte 03 00 The book uncovers the versatility and literary skills of oral narrators in a small African island. Relying on the researches of three French ethnographers who interviewed storytellers in the 1970s-80s, Lee Haring shows a once-colonised people using verbal art to preserve ancient values in the postcolonial world, when the island of Mayotte was transforming itself from a neglected colony to an overseas department of France. The author’s innovation is to read ethnographic researches as play scripts—to see printed folktales as accounts of live performances. One storyteller after another comments symbolically on what it is like to be a formerly colonised population. Storytelling women, in particular, combine diverse plots and characters to create traditional-sounding stories, which could not have been predicted from the African, Malagasy, Indian, and European traditions coexisting in Mayotte. Haring’s account shows them to be particularly skilled at irony and ambiguity, conveying both submissive and rebellious attitudes in their tales. He makes Mayotte storytelling accessible to a new, English-speaking audience and demonstrates that traditional storytellers in those years were preserving, but also critiquing, their inherited social order in a changing world. Their creative intentions, cultural influences and widely different narrative styles constitute Mayotte’s system of the arts of the word.Literary specialists, folklore enthusiasts, and people who like reading stories will find much to appreciate in this engaging and sophisticated book. 04 00 Foreword 1 Mark Turin Preface 3 A Note on the Text 9 1. Mayotte Is Ours 11 2. Varieties of Performing 49 3. Giving an Account of Herself 121 Works Cited 175 List of Illustrations 183 Index 185 20 00 Open Access Open Book Publishers 01 Open Book Publishers Cambridge, UK 04 01 20230713 13 15 9781805110057 09 Open Book Publishers 02 Publisher's website: web shop https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/OBP.0315 99 01 09 Open Book Publishers 29 Publisher's website: download the title https://books.openbookpublishers.com/10.11647/obp.0315.pdf 99 01