African Folklore: An Encyclopedia - Marshalls University

African Americans 899
but they can only be worked out by an analysis of the individual narrative that exists
within that parallel world.
The patterns are needed because they give emotions form, shaping them. Patterns
work the evoked emotions into designs that, while having little to do with the surface
movement, are composed wholly of those images. The body and voice of the storyteller
and nonverbal elements of performance play large roles in this shaping process. Patterns
are the chief organizing devices of storytelling. Images, which are sensed actions, are
organized into patterns, and theme (or meaning) grows out of these patterns.
Metaphor
The power of a tale is not that one emerges with a glimmering, memorable metaphor. The
tale is itself a metaphor, and that is its power. To attempt to summarize the tale in the
form of a single metaphor would be to paraphrase that which cannot be paraphrased.
Fantasy tales are a form of reasoning, a way of looking at things. The move from reality
to fantasy is useful—things do not obey normal routines because they are not normal
routines; they are the stuff of normal routines brought together in poetic form to reveal
new relationships. Because tales use the materials of the known world, audiences have a
tendency to be sensitive to their interrelationships, and when those relationships do not
correspond to the way we behave in their routine world, they are confused. This is the
world of art, a closed world, and normal experiences of images are given new forms and
new relationships and linkages. The result is a new measure of the real world. The
blending of the real and fantasy is the key, not simply fantasy. Without the moorings of
the real world, fantasy would be dull. Fantasy breaks the world into artificial pieces, for
one thing. It forces thinking about those matters into new modes.
It is the figure in the mask that links African stories and, in turn, provides connections
to stories throughout the world. That mask, whatever shape it takes, becomes the chamber
for transformation, which is at the heart of the tale-telling tradition. It may be a literal
mask, or it may be figurative, but it is present in all stories that have to do with change.
What is universal in the African stories is this metamorphosing of humans, a change
revealed by a mirroring process, by journeying, by dualism—in short, by metaphor,
which is at the heart of the tale. This inner metaphorical core universalizes the stories,
whether it be stark trickster stories (which contain the amoral energy necessary to the
transformation), the seemingly obvious journeying stories, or the more complex tales in
which characters are poetically layered. It is this process that envelopes members of
audiences, so that they have a shimmering sense of the path that lies before them.
References
Abu-Manga, Al-Amin. 1985. Baakankaro, A Fulani Epic from Sudan. Africana Marburgensia 9:9–
11.
Akivaga, S.Kichamiu, and A.Bole Odaga. 1982. Oral Literature. Nairoibi: Heinemann.
Basden, George Thomas. 1938. Niger I bos. London: Cass.
Benjamin, Walter. 1973. Illuminations. Tr. Harry Zohn. Glasgow: William Collins.