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In Search of Sunjata

In Search of Sunjata

The Mande Oral Epic as History, Literature, and Performance
Edited by Ralph A. Austen
Distribution: World
Publication date: 1/1/2000
Format: paper 360 pages, 2 maps
ISBN: 978-0-253-21248-1
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Description

The Sunjata epic, which celebrates the founder of the 13th century Mali empire, is the most famous African epic. The pathbreaking essays by well known scholars in this watershed volume examine Sunjata from a variety of perspectives.

Author Bio

Ralph A. Austen is Professor of African History, co-chair of the Committee on African and African American Studies, and chair of the Committee on International Relations at the University of Chicago.

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Table of Contents

Editor’s Introduction
The Dichotomy of Power and Authority in Mande Society and in the Epic of Sunjata, John W. Johnson
The History of the Sunjata Epic: A Review of the Evidence, Ivor Wilks
The Epic of Sunjata: Structure, Preservation, Transmission, Seydou Camara
The Historical Transformation of Genres: Sunjata as Panegyric, Folktale, Epic, and Novel, Ralph A. Austen
Sinimogo—The Man for Tomorrow: Sunjata on the Fringes of the Mande World, Stephen Belcher
Searching for the Historical Ancestor: The paradigm of Sunjata in Oral Traditions of the Sahel (13th-19th Centuries), Mamadou Diawara
The Gesere of Borgu: A Neglected Type of Manding Diaspora, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias
Jeli and Sere: The Dialectic of the Word in the Manden, Karim Traore
Mooning Armies and Mothering Heroes: Female Power in Mande Epic Tradition, David C. Conrad
Sunjata as Written Literature: The Role of the Literary Mediator in the Dissemination of the Sunjata Epic, Stephen P. D. Bulman
Butchering Heroism?: Sunjata and the Negotiation of Postcolonial Mande Identity in Diabate’s Le Boucher de Kouta, James R. McGuire
The Production and Reproduction of Sunjata, Charles S. Bird
An Ethnography of the Epic of Sunjata in Kela, Jan Jansen
Out of Print: The Epic Cassette as Intervention, Reinvention, and Commodity, Robert C. Newton
Glossary
Bibliography