African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African folklore 898
the younger children in the evening time. The older children carried on by reciting the
stories to one another” (Helser 1930, 9).
The Power of Stories
“When those of us in my generation awakened to earliest consciousness,” said a
contemporary Xhosa storyteller, “we were born into a tradition that was already
flourishing” (Zenani 1992, 7). Walter Benjamin, having read an African tale, commented,
“This story from ancient Egypt is still capable after thousands of years of arousing
astonishment and thoughtfulness. It resembles the seeds of grain which have lain for
centuries in the pyramids shut up air-tight and have retained their germinative power to
this day” (1973, 90). Storytelling is entertainment, always, and it is seldom openly or
obviously didactic. But it routinely embraces the breadth of human experience, providing
emotional excursions into experiences that shape audiences and reveals to them the
contexts of the worlds in which they live, as well as their place in those worlds. Stories
are ancient, relying on emotion-evoking images that come from the past, yet stories are
always contemporary, constructing around those ancient images the world of the present.
These images from the past become a storyteller’s means of exploring and shaping the
audience’s experiences of the world that it inhabits. If a member of the audience cannot
move beyond the literal level of the story, then the power of the tale is denied him. It is
the rhythm of the tale that seduces him, lures him into the story, to the characters and
their relationships, and, in the end, it is that emotional participation in the activities of the
tale that make the audience a part of the transforming metaphor that is at the core of all
storytelling. That is where messages can be found; it is the reason one cannot ignore the
wiles of the tale-teller.
The Role of Fantasy
Fantasy, to which audiences respond, is complex, comprised as it is of mythic images,
patterns, and relationships within the context of artistic performance. Contemporary
images are not fantasy until they are introduced into the parallel mythic world; they then
retain their real-world significance, but are brought into relationships with fantasy
images. All are encompassed in performance, which is, of course, fantasy, comprised of
dance, music, and relations with audience. So fantasy is defined as an image, an action, a
pattern, a relationship that occurs within a tightly manipulated and controlled narrative
environment that partakes of the real world but is itself a parallel world. That parallel
world can only occur within the context and embrace of the real world, so that there is
always an ironic encounter between them. But the relationship is only ironic: it is not a
one-to-one relationship.
The fantasy parallel world is fed by the real world; indeed, everything in the parallel
world can be seen to have its origins in the real world. But it is not the real world in its
organization, in the relationship between images, or in the images themselves when those
images transcend in some way their real-life counterparts. This parallel world exists in its
own right, with its own rules and laws. These rules and laws can be stated in broad terms,