Lecture | This Time For Africa! series
Telling Tales in Iraqw
- Date
- Friday 2 May 2025
- Time
- Series
- This Time for Africa! series
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.21
Abstract
When I arrived in Mbulu, Tanzania, in 1987 to collect data for my PhD on the grammar of Iraqw, John Qamlali offered his services and he would end the daily sessions with a folktale or song. From that first day until today Iraqw folktales have come my way and I am now working on a book. The corpus has helped me in my linguistic analysis and I will show a few examples. In a book on folktales, I need to think about how to appeal to different audiences, there and here, which I struggle with and for which I seek your input. The book should be attractive to non-linguists; to which end I discuss various aspects of the stories, such as, the narrative functions of songs, the reality basis of the behaviour of animals, recurrent themes such as magical birth and disaster. Anouk de Wit, Nicolas Lotman, Jeroen Ravenhorst, Basilisa Hhao, Lightness Isoyeck assist me in this project in various ways.