Cultural Unity of Worldview

[Olùkọ́ Ọbádélé]

Cultural Unity of Worldview as Expressed through Myth

by
Obadele Kambon

I. Argument: Myth in African Oral Narrative Tradition in general and that of the Akan and Yoruba in particular are manifestations of common worldview

II. Cultural Unity of Worldview as expressed through myth
A. Historical Background
B. Worldview and Myth
1. Definitions
a. Worldview
b. Ethos
c. Ontology
2. African Cultural Identity and Worldview
C. Worldview and Ethos

III. African Oral Narrative Tradition

IV. Analysis of Selected Myths of the Akan and Yoruba
A. Mythic Elements
B. Interpretation
C. Ethos and Form

V. Conclusion: Common myths and mythic elements of the Akan and Yoruba as Exemplification of Common Worldview

The objective of this paper is to illustrate through an analysis of myth as expressed in the oral narrative, that a common ethos and ontology derived from a common cosmology exists within Africa in general amongst the Akan and Yoruba in particular. This focus on cultural unity is a departure from the tendency of largely anthropological works, which have tended to view Africa as a scramble of disconnected myths, which emphasize the idea of diversity to the extreme. This perspective has resulted in the view that traditional African worldviews/belief systems are, for the most part, historically and geographically unconnected. The underlying theoretical basis of this paper is that an understanding of the worldview that gives rise the oral narrative is crucial to understanding the essence of the oral narrative itself. The oral narrative is similarly a vehicle through which an understanding of a common African worldview and ethos becomes apparent as the underlying basis of similar or identical motifs, symbols, and narrative formal structures of the Akan and Yoruba Oral Narrative Traditions.

Tracing, briefly, the study of African Oral Literature by Europeans reveals a succession of distinct schools of thought. Charles Darwin’s evolutionism, and its offspring cultural evolutionism proposed a theory of universal “unilineal evolution” wherein cultures were perceived as moving from a primitive to a complex state (i.e. African to European). Although evolutionism in and of itself was seen as a revolutionary theory, its basis was fundamentally grounded in previously held European religious beliefs of a hierarchical “chain of being” which posited a cosmology wherein the European god was placed at the top, followed by angels, (white) man, other races (although African was firmly at the bottom), followed by animals, and inanimate objects. This “scientific” analysis, when applied by cultural evolutionists such as Edward Burnet Tylor, George James Tyler, and Andrew Lang, to “primitive” oral narratives, served the ulterior motives of upholding its fundamentally racist theoretical assumptions rather than the narratives themselves.

Evolutionism and the subsequent progression of European schools of thought such as diffusionism, psychoanalysis, functionalism, formalism, and structuralism, all have as an underlying basis the concepts of linear progression and universalism. I posit that the endless successions of schools of thought may reveal more about the worldview of European researchers who proposed them than the subject of African narratives that they are ostensibly researching. This European worldview is characterized by a linear perception of progress, which strives for control and absolute truth and in so doing, perceives the world in diametrical opposites. In regards to these opposites,
Conventionally, one of these becomes valued, while its converse is understood as lacking value. One is ‘good’ and the other is ‘bad.’ It then becomes necessary (valued behavior) to attempt to destroy one (the ‘bad’), while the other ascends to supremacy.



This is an example of how the underlying worldview is useful in understanding the products of a culture whether it is the oral narrative, or in this case, theoretical frameworks within which the oral narrative is the apparent subject. The underlying worldview that precipitates the succession of theories is one wherein the “new” theory is ascribed value whereas the “old” theory is debunked, discredited and abandoned in a linear pursuit forward towards absolute truth. As such, in this view, “‘Progress’ does not recur; it is triumph over the past.” Also instructive is the understanding that Europeans “represent the sequence of time as a line going to the infinite.” This underlying worldview manifests itself in a linear progression of theoretical models and even in interpretations placed on the oral narratives themselves. The African oral narrative as subject, within this understanding of the European epistemological (study of the nature of knowledge) imperative, simply serves as the battlefield upon which this drama of linear progress is acted out.

In order to understand this aesthetic and emotional imperative, it is necessary to understand that, “The mode or determining structure of the western world view is that of power, control, and destruction.” Power in this case should be understood as “The ability to define reality and to have others respond to that definition as though it were their own.” Similarly, other than the surface definition, destruction should be understood as an imperative to dichotomize. This is particularly evident in misinterpretations of the myths of the African oral tradition, which in reality “are often a means of revealing various dimensions and perspectives of the same mythical theme.” Thus myths have been, when expedient, viewed as competing doctrines rather than components of a larger whole. Ironically, the watchword is diversity when applied within the African context, whereas similarity and universality is focused upon when this allows European conceptions and definitions to be imposed on an African reality.



According to Ani, “This concept of ‘universalism’ is an ideological statement of such wide and devastating political-cultural ramifications that it warrants continual discussion in the process of delineating the critical expressions of European cultural imperialism. It is a theme found in every aspect of European nationalism. It is cultural commitment disguised.” This is the case wherein, “Once individuals are persuaded that universal characteristics are proper human goals, European patterns and values can be presented as universal, while others are labeled as ‘particular.’ Then European ideology can be proselytized without the appearance of imposition, invasion, conquest, exploitation, or chauvinism.”

This discussion of universalism leads us to a fundamental question posed by Christopher Miller. Namely, “Does (African Literature) provide anything more than a vast new supply of raw materials (texts) to which Western methodologies can now be applied?” The word “methodologies” could easily be substituted for “conceptions of reality,” “definitions,” or “theories.” Modern theories of universalism, which have intellectual roots as far back as the philosophies expounded by Aristotle, are highly functional and often used by Europeans “who attempt to impose their cultural values on others.”
Within universalism African “mythology” is an appendage, usually to the European mythological tradition, thus allowing European theoretical frameworks, concepts and definitions to be utilized with impunity in analyzing and interpreting African phenomena. In understanding this theory as the product of a particular cultural world-view, one must understand fundamental principles of the European worldview, which aspires to the power to define and therefore control. This is counterproductive in terms of attempting understand the African Oral Narrative and the world-view that produces it because, “Every world-view generates a set of metaphysical definitions and can only be explained or understood using those definitions as reference points. Gross distortions and misconceptions result when alien metaphysical conceptions are injected into cross-cultural analysis of a given world-view.” The myth of objectivity is complicit in these distortions and misconceptions in the sense that when the researcher seeks to eliminate himself from the theorizing process simultaneously fails to analyze how his own world-view, ethos, and epistemological assumptions inform his analysis of the objectified subject of study.

The use of European myths, conceptual definitions and theoretical frameworks as the paradigm and standard of judgment is tantamount to European surgeons using their surgical instruments to cut open an African body proclaiming “this is your lung and this is your liver.” When the African, waking up from the anesthesia attempts to define them as ahurututuo or br[ch949]bo[ch596] and place them in the context of the dynamic system that is human body as conceptualized by Africans, her mouth is duct taped as the business of squeezing the organs of the African’s body into a European framework of understanding, definition, and conceptualization is resumed; this time without annoying distractions. The equal sign will kill the African’s conception of reality. We find this metaphor pertinent in each progressive European school of thought’s attempt to categorize and define the African Oral Narrative, its structure, and its symbols.

In addition to providing a cursory survey of the theoretical basis for European schools of thought regarding the Oral Narrative, it should also be evident that when one speaks, one says as much if not more about oneself (i.e. One’s world-view) than about one’s subject. Thus, although we encounter interesting analyses and methodologies concerning the African Oral Tradition in each of the various European schools of thought, these, in the final evaluation are far more instructive in understanding the European worldview that produced them than the African Oral Tradition due largely to the subjective (although ostensibly objective) epistemologically defined goals that are implicit within them.

The African Oral Narrative Tradition similarly provides insight into the African worldview from which this rich tradition has arisen. With this as my point of departure, I will rely on Dona Marimba Richards, primarily for her conceptual definitions, Chukwunyere Kamalu in his discussion of the African world-view, and Isidore Okpewho’s analysis of form in the African Oral Narrative Tradition. Other scholars such as Ay[ch7885] Bamgbos[ch61481]e, Abi[ch7885]la Irele, and J.H. Kwabena Nketia, respectively will be consulted for analyses of the Yoruba and Akan contexts, specifically.

Before endeavoring upon the task at hand, however, another pertinent issue that deserves attention, particularly in the context of this discussion, is the use of a language alien to the worldview to be described. According to Kamalu, “the word used to translate another word from the original language, may not mean precisely what is meant in that other language...words referring to abstract concepts of one culture cannot be faithfully translated in the language of another...a different language does in itself encapsulate a different worldview and even ontology” (Kamalu, 14). This is a prominent consideration (especially as translation plays a vital role in this study), which is often overlooked or underplayed in literary analyses of form, content or categorization of verbal art in the African Oral Tradition. Due to complex nature of this issue, certain essential concepts need to be defined and redefined in the context of this paper. Primary among these are cosmology/world-view, ethos, and ontology, as this is a means of circumventing to some extent the conceptual baggage that these concepts have brought from their particular cultural foundations. Following the argument of Richards,
A world-view results from a shared cultural experience, just as it helps to form that experience. It presents us with a systematic set of ideas about many things. Its significance is profound and it has far reaching effects on those who share it. It effects our perceptions of nature, of ourselves as human beings, of each other and out relationship to all beings. World-view helps to inject ‘meaning’ into life; to determine which are meaningful experiences and events and which are not.

In the African context, this speaks to an all-encompassing spiritual philosophy (Cosmology, Epistemology, Ontology), “indicating our conceptions of the structure of the universe, the relationship and origin of nature and human beings, truth and knowledge, [and] reality and the nature of being.” This spiritual philosophy, heretofore referred to as Worldview or Cosmology, is often either the subject, or a crucial element in the content of The African Oral Narrative.



Related to the African Worldview is the African Ethos, which, I posit, informs to a large extent the symbols, images and even structural forms that resonate in the context of The African Oral Narrative:
The ethos of a people is related to special characteristics that identify them as a group, setting them apart from other groups. Our ethos refers to our emotional responses and reactions. It does not refer to conscious or self-conscious responses and reactions. It has to do with the way in which certain things make us feel good and others displease us. It is the bedrock of the Black aesthetic. It has to do with the things in life that excite us, and those about which we share laughter. It helps to explain why we tend to ignore some things, and why others make us cry. That is what ethos is all about. It is not a psychological term. It does not refer to ‘individual’ or idiosyncratic experience or response. Ethos, like culture, is understood to refer to shared group reaction and group response.

Ethos is significant in that human beings tend to use this shared group response create a conception of order out of chaos. The unique role that ethos plays in the life of a people is largely the reason why we can speak of African Mythology, or a Department of African Languages and Literature for that matter in that it identifies common group characteristics and responses. In this case, the delineated group is comprised of the collective African World Community. Ethos and Worldview share an interdependent relationship in that within the process of creating order out of chaos, “The dominant theme or character of that order (world-view) will be a function of [a people’s] collective ethos.” As such, ethos informs philosophical conceptions such as man vs. Nature and man in concert with nature alike. It also helps us to understand the products (i.e. Literature, theories, philosophies) of each ontological view.

This brings us to African conceptions of being and relationships, or “Ontology.” In regards to African Ontology, Kamalu asserts that,
African ontology incorporates a dynamic interactive view of being, in contrast to the static, isolationist view. This means that a being is not thought to exist in itself or of itself, but only has a meaningful existence in relation to its interaction with other beings and things. Thus a thing is known by the dynamic web of its relations with the external world. This principle of African ontology...is incontrovertible and can be applied to every facet of the African worldview without exception. Whether we speak of African art, “religion,” conceptions of space and time, ethics and morals or the conception of the individual, the principle unfailingly applies.

The implications of this conception of reality as manifested in the African Oral Narrative are vast as this ontological principle is evident in all of the oral narratives consulted in this study. Related to African ontology are notions of destiny, ethics, and natural law. These will be explored further in our analysis of the oral narratives in question below.

Following Okpewho’s line of reasoning, the term oral narrative is preferred to “folktale” due its avoidance of a possibly pejorative connotation attached to the former, as well as a its positive focus on the medium of expression, which is word of mouth. For our purposes, classification of these oral narratives will highlight similarities of each representative of the African Oral Narrative Tradition, in this case Akan and Yoruba, in relation to the other. Even though we recognize that there are numerous ethnic and linguistic groups within Africa, “there are nevertheless several common features an customs that unite these groups as an African people.” This is the underlying theoretical basis of this paper. Okpewho presents a useful classification in the understanding of the common myths of the Akan and Yoruba in what he refers to as the explanatory tale, which is “a story that sets out primarily to explain the origin of one of a whole range of things or ideas within a community’s environment and experience.” There is also what we may refer to as the moral tale, a story designed to socialize a child into the worldview and ontology of the people. According to Bamgbos[ch61481]e, “The dual purpose of the folktale is to amuse as well as to instruct. The amusement is achieved by the way the story is narrated and quite often by the humorous episodes in it. The didactic purpose is achieved through a careful selection of themes (mainly involving an exhibition of some vice of wickedness) and the and the manipulation of the story in such a way as to result in the punishment of vice or the reward of virtue.” The element of amusement speaks to ethos in relation to how the story is conveyed in meeting the emotional prerogative that the group ethos provides. This culturally determined imperative includes images, themes, and structures that the narrator uses to “appeal to our feeling and our understanding.” The whole universe of experience (as perceived by the people) is thus drawn upon.

As the perception of the universe (i.e. World-view) is similar for the Akan and Yoruba, it follows that there will be a similarity in mythic elements. These include motifs, symbols, imagery, proverbial allusions, themes, and use of similar stylistic devices in the oral narratives. Similarity within the structure of Akan and Yoruba oral narrative, as expounded upon by Bamgbos[ch61481]e, is also readily apparent:
Folktales being oral in form are told by an omniscient narrator. The style of narration is direct and intimate, and audience participation takes place in the form of sympathetic comments, fixed responses, and joining in the chorus of the song in the story. The vague opening of the story and the characteristic ending, quite often involving the use of set phrases, are also essential aspects of the narrative technique.



Equally as apparent are tropic metaphors, which occur in each tradition. In each set of stories as referenced in Appendix A and Appendix B, we find symbols, the most prominent being that of Ìjàpá, the tortoise of the Yoruba Tradition, and Ananse of the Akan Tradition. On the human level, these characters represent a personification of the element of uncertainty, chaos and ambiguity that to some extent liberates one from one’s destiny upsetting the order of things. This is an agent of chaos and uncertainty that is symbolically depicted as part animal and part human represents an African cosmology wherein a person is “paradoxically free-willed despite being given a destiny from birth, which it is his purpose to fulfill.” Destiny as such is a principle of order and organization, which is controllable and uncontrollable to the extent that it is revealed to and accepted by a person in the process of living. Deviation from this order is, in the African traditions of Akan and Yoruba, often personified in the form of Ananse and Ìjàpá as they carry out the act of making life-altering decisions in each Oral Narrative. According to Kamalu:
In order to have moral responsibility, the individual in African eyes must be free; yet at the same time each person is gifted with a destiny. In African thought the individual is both free and predestined. This is an apparent contradiction in western terms, but in the African view this merely presents a paradox, which poses no problem. This is a major problem of western philosophy: Do we have free will or are we determined by our circumstances? Western thought is conditioned not to accept paradoxes and to search for certainties.

As such, although a person is gifted with a destiny, the element of free will allows for the conception of a moral accountability for one’s actions, which have consequences in that they extend beyond one’s own person to one’s community and environment. This idea is dramatized clearly in Appendix A, Set IV, wherein, in the Akan version, the origin of the desert is attributed to Ananse’s behavior or the Yoruba version wherein Ìjàpá ultimately forfeits his life as a result of his own choices.

In this dramatization and in the universe as conceptualized by Africans, man is not a static being but a “dynamically developing cluster of forces whose powers may be increased or decreased according to his moral or spiritual acts. They may also be influenced by other people and by supernatural and spiritual acts.” This understanding of reality is dramatized time and again through Ìjàpá of the Yoruba Oral Narrative Tradition and Ananse of the Akan. Ìjàpá and Ananse function in each tradition to provide a symbol of this ontological principle wherein the dynamic web of influences is set in motion by a decision not to live in accordance with destiny’s organization. We find in each tradition the recurring theme wherein the volatile cluster of forces, which make up the person in African conception, is thrown out of balance and into anarchy as life’s purpose is sidelined for some smaller part of life, usually symbolized in the Oral Narrative as food, honor, or money. In African thought, in pursuance of this narrow ephemeral goal, one can subvert the ordering of one’s destiny (one’s highest potential) through one’s behavior and decisions. This idea is eloquently summarized in the Igbo proverb: Onye kwe, chi ya kwe; whoever is determined enough, his Chi/destiny will go along with him. This idea is socialized through the Oral Narrative wherein a character allows a view into the consequences of losing sight of one’s life-purpose and the lust and hunger, pain and injury, and cunning and stupidity which are implicit in this choice. This element of disorder makes possible an understanding of the wholeness of life, and an experience of what is not permitted in the context of what is: the Oral Narrative.

Thus the African philosophy of ethics is intimately tied to the basic ontological principle of interrelation of Traditional African Philosophy wherein nothing exists of or by itself. This principle gives rise to a dynamic view of ethics wherein good and evil are inherent in behavior rather than in being. Thus no one is good or evil in oneself, but only in terms of one’s relation to others. This leads to a collective, rather than isolationist view of morality wherein one’s behavior is conceptualized as existing in an intricate web of relationships leading to consequences for oneself as well as others. Thus in Set IV of Appendix A, when Ìjàpá is described as lazy, this is not an inherent quality but rather observable behavior as described in the story. This also provides an explanation of why we find examples of a beneficent Ananse assisting the mouse and Ìjàpá assisting the monkey, as the two figures are not necessarily inherently disorderly or selfish. In certain instances, they restore order to the situation. Thus, through Ìjàpá and Ananse, chaos and unpredictability often are used to personify the chaotic element of life which, “paradoxically, inspires its reorganization and renewal and which is also essential for the meaningfulness and completeness of life.”

Particularly worthy of note in the case of Ìjàpá and Ananse is the African epistemological notions of good and evil, life and death, and order and chaos. An understanding of the African conception of the universe as being comprised of complementary pairs rather than as diametrical opposites is crucial to understanding any facet of the African Cosmology and therefore, the African Oral Narrative. These complementary pairs are conceptualized as “...Forces, or principles of reality that are interdependent and necessary to each other, in a unified system. The Divine Essence, for instance, is both female and male and therefore able to reproduce itself.” This idea is summarized in the Akan proverb: In this world, we exist in pairs. The interrelated nature of these pairs is expressed through the Yoruba proverb: “With bad and with good is how all things walk.”

The significance of these complementary pairs is evident in Appendix A, Set I, wherein the interdependent nature of good, as symbolized by the dish and the scoop, and bad as symbolized by the whip is summarized by Ìjàpá’s statement: “A person who eats sweetness, it is only right that he or she should taste sourness.” Sweetness and sourness are metaphors for the concert of complementary opposites within African Philosophy. This is a recurrent motif which is only understood well in the cosmological context of how these complementary pairs such as masculine and feminine, form and formlessness, chaos and order, darkness and light, wet and dry, fire and water, earth and sky, activity and inactivity and life and death are conceived as interdependent components of a larger whole.



Also integral to understanding of the African Oral Narrative is the principle of human and cosmic justice. This concept encompasses the African View of freewill and destiny as well as that of good and evil. According to Kamalu, in the African Ontological view of the universe, “There is a general understanding of a principle of reciprocation of moral action that is also a principle of operation of natural law...Whatever a person does, whether good or bad, returns to him/her in some way.” This concept is placed into the mouth of the ruler’s summary in the story of “Ìjàpá, The Snail, and [ch7884]s[ch61481]ìn’s Hunchback (Yoruba).” He states that, “The one who threw ashes into the wind, had them blow back onto him. Wickedness will happen to the owner of wickedness. The one who plants pieces of yam, it is he and his family who will eat the harvest.” More than simply a moral, this lesson is part of a larger world-view, from which oral narrative is derived wherein natural law and human law coincide in the form of reciprocity, “...represents the principle on which the society and the cosmos are founded.” Moreover, in the context Yoruba and Akan Oral Narratives as paradigmatic, it becomes “quite apparent that Africans readily connect the notions of truth, natural law and moral law as an indivisible entity.” This underlying philosophy is represented in all of the Oral Narratives consulted in this study wherein every action causes it’s like: “In the moral sense, whatever deed a person does returns to him in some form. In the physical sense every event is the result of some other event which is in its likeness.” The idea of reciprocity, which is a central pillar in African thought, finds concrete expression in the context of call and response patterning, particularly in opening and closing formulas and songs. Similarly, what is referred to in literary terms as parallelism, finds its underlying aesthetic appeal attributable to the harmony and balance implied in the philosophical notion of reciprocity.

An understanding of The African Cosmology is also instructive in understanding the use of personification and the element of the supernatural in the African Oral Narrative. This African Cosmology views the entire universe, from human beings to animals, plants and the soil as being “endowed with a form of soul, consciousness or living force emanating from some singular Great Force/Energy/Spirit.” According to Irele, this cosmological principle as evinced in the Yoruba Oral Narrative Tradition, comes “...directly out of the African, and specifically Yoruba Conception which sees the supernatural not merely as a prolongation of the natural world, but as co-existing actively with it.” This idea is dramatized through what we may simplify as personification and the element of the supernatural in the Oral Narrative.

As affirmed by Richards, “In the African world-view the human and the divine are not hopelessly separated, as they are in western theology, where the divine is defined as being the negation of all that is human. (It requires a ‘miracle’ for them to interact.) In Africa the human is divine...” Thus the human has the ability to restore or detract from order through what may be termed as mundane means, or through supernatural ‘magic’ which in this world-view is seen as “the skill of activating the power inherent in matter.” In the Traditional African World-View, the manifestations of the power of the Supreme Being in the form of divinities of nature or in the form of various personal or impersonal spirit forces that reside in natural objects may be communicated with. These forces may be petitioned to come to human assistance. This philosophical idea, rather than being abstracted, is given concrete images (i.e. Olókun, The Scoop, The Dish) in the stories, “How It Came About That Children Were (First) Whipped” and “Ìjàpá and the Unripe Palm-Fruits,” respectively. Also depicted is the potentially dangerous side of this phenomenon given form through the symbol of the whip. The underlying philosophy relates back to the African Ontological principle wherein complementary pairs exist in conjunction as components of a larger whole.
When this notion of a divine life force that permeates all creation is dramatized, we find actual speech and character traits conferred upon these natural objects and upon nature itself. Thus, in the Oral Narratives we find different levels upon which divine life forces manifest themselves: within the universe in the form of divine natural/moral law and the Creator, on the earth in the form of spirit forces within nature and natural objects which are extensions of the Creator, and in the individual psyche as the divine element of chaos and order inherent in freewill and destiny. The African Oral Narrative, in this context, is a tool that uses imagery, metaphor, and symbolism to lend immediacy to African Cosmological, Ontological, and Epistemological ideas.
Within the larger context of the African Oral Narrative Tradition, the Akan and Yoruba Oral Narratives form components of a “...great tradition of allegorical and symbolic literature, set within the framework of a particular complex of cultural references.” This great tradition may be understood as what Irele calls the collective myth, which provides the organizing principle for the individual symbolic framework a channel for one’s artistic vision.
The nature of this symbolic framework’s expression is determined by the aesthetic prerogative attributable to the collective ethos of a people. To recapitulate our working definition of ethos:

The ethos of a people is related to special characteristics that identify them as a group, setting them apart from other groups. Our ethos refers to our emotional responses and reactions. It does not refer to conscious or self-conscious responses and reactions. It has to do with the way in which certain things make us feel good and others displease us. It is the bedrock of the Black aesthetic. It has to do with the things in life that excite us, and those about which we share laughter. It helps to explain why we tend to ignore some things, and why others make us cry. That is what ethos is all about. It is not a psychological term. It does not refer to ‘individual’ or idiosyncratic experience or response. Ethos, like culture, is understood to refer to shared group reaction and group response.



According to Bamgbos[ch61481]e, the audience is an essential factor in the performance of the Oral Narrative. An understanding of Ethos provides an explanation of exactly why the audience, with its attendant aesthetic expectations, is a central factor. Ethos, to a large extent, informs the artist’s choice of and manipulation of structures and organizing principles within the context of the story. The concept of ethos in the African context is usually not given due consideration in the European mythological conception of a universal aesthetic. This has led to the European search for meter or at least “ethno-meter” as evidence of their universalized European conception of what poetry is or at least should be. This imperative is reminiscent of Europeans, upon arriving in Africa, looking for churches as evidence of their universalized conception of religion. The issue that we are highlighting here is the problem of setting the European aesthetic as the definitional paradigm against which the African is judged. This is an issue that is particularly evident in stylistics wherein “the aesthetic of control” is most evident as the subject is “analyzed, dissected, ‘studied’ and translated into the language of mathematics.” This is an example of the underlying European traditional ethos, which values rationalization, the diametrical opposite of emotion, as a means to control. The end result of this particular European epistemological imperative is the normalization of the European means of defining, in this case, the African Oral Narrative. This results in the “universalization” of all reality under the European determined conceptualization, while diversity is typically focused upon amongst the non-European “others.”

We are thus presented with the difficulty of understanding the form of the African Oral Narrative in lieu of the conceptual baggage inherent in conducting any such analysis in a European language with its corresponding epistemological, ontological and cosmological assumptions and underpinnings. This issue cannot, however, be addressed with the attention that it deserves here as this is beyond (yet paradoxically related to) the scope of this paper. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the underlying cultural unity as exemplified through a common cosmology, ontology, epistemology and ethos in the Akan and Yoruba Oral Narrative Traditions. These manifestations of a common world-view are seen as paradigmatic of the cultural unity of Africa as expressed through variations on the same culturally determined “mythological” themes.

With an understanding of the problematic nature of defining reality within an alien conceptual framework, we will nevertheless attempt to highlight this cultural unity of ethos as evinced in the form and structure of the Akan and Yoruba Oral Narrative Traditions. Okpewho outlines elements that are useful in highlighting this cultural unity, such as repetition, parallelism, ideophones, digression, imagery, allusion, and symbolism. In conjunction with Okpewho’s conception of digression is Nketia’s discussion of the verse interlude.
All of these form a means of patterning wherein the larger framework builds from introduction, to complication, to climax, to resolution, to conclusion which creates a single group out of the previous sections. The emotional imperative determined by ethos is fulfilled in ultimate cathartic release, which coincides with the story’s conclusion as well as in the body of the story itself. To understand the cyclic pattern of African storytelling, imitating the rising and setting of the sun, it is necessary to understand the conceptualization of the African Universe within which the human being is central. As affirmed by Kamalu, “A study of the African universe is inevitably a study of African ideas of the human being; for the for the African view of the world is a human-centered one.” This conception of the entire universe plays no small role in the emotional aesthetic needs (ethos) of the audience to whom the Oral Narrator/Artist is accountable. In this African Cosmological conception, the birth of a human being is analogous to the rising of the sun. Similarly, the “introduction” phase marks the “birth” of the story, which is typically marked with set formulaic phrases. Amongst the Akan, this is typically the alliterative formula: “Call: Y[ch949]nse s[ch949] nse s[ch949] o? Response: Y[ch949]sesa soa wo ara,” or “Call: Ananses[ch949]m y[ch949] asisi o! Response: To no yie!” A typical introductory phrase of the Yoruba is “Call: Àló[ch61481] o! Response: Àlò[ch61481]! Call: Àló[ch61481] mi dá gbà-á, ó dá gbò-ó, ó dá fììrìgbagbòó, ó dálérí Ìjàpá àti Erin.”

BaKongo Cosmogram depicting the Life Cycle

From this point, the story develops as the day develops as a child develops. A patterning of repetition, parallelism, ideophones, digression, imagery, allusion, and symbolism marks the element of development implicit in the phase of what is termed complication. Repetition, asserts Okpewho is one of the most fundamental characteristic features of oral literature as it has both an aesthetic and a utilitarian value of patterning and adding to the structure of the text. Within the larger cycle of the life of the story, we find the smaller cycles of recurrences as mirrors of the whole. Ethos determines when and where this is a desired characteristic of the African Oral Narrative, while simultaneously offering an explanation of why. It is because of their own ethos in which repetition was not valued aesthetically that many early collectors and editors of Oral Narratives “had the unfortunate habit of cutting what they considered to be ‘wearisome repetition’ of phrases and whole passages.” The utilitarian value of repetition is that it also aids in the development of the plot. We see this clearly in the song interludes of “How Ìjàpá Stole the Water of the Animals” and even in the spoken formula addressed to the dish and whip in “How It Came About That Children Were (First) Whipped.” Okpewho affirms how “even in regular portions of the story in which the narrator does not alter or raise his voice in the song mode, certain phrases or lines—even a whole framework of details—are used over and over again for constructing successive stages of the story.” This philosophical idea of the cyclical nature of the world and life itself find concrete expression in the life of the story and can be summed up in the Akan proverb: “The goat says: what will come has come already.” This idea is connected to cosmological phenomena at every level of existence.



Just as life is comprised of recurrent situations and decisions, we find this thought expressed in the Oral Narrative, “elaborating the same idea through a series of parallel sentences contrived to express this idea in different ways and through subtle variations.” A beautiful example of this occurs in the story of “Ìjàpá and the Unripe Palm-Fruits” wherein the famine is described. The balance of these semantically parallel sentences is reflective of the balance perceived in the cosmos. This notion of balance is inextricably linked to African Cosmological concepts of reciprocity and complementary pairs.

The element of “digression” is connected to African conception of temporal phenomena, which, as previously stated is conceptualized as moving in cyclical patterns. This serves the purpose of extending the narration or for restructuring the tale. In the Akan Oral Narrative, for example, “If at any point, the narrator finds that an incident happened earlier than the one he has just mentioned, he can go back. He is allowed to alter his time perspective in order to offer an explanation. In Akan tradition he would say kasa ne ne nnyamu ‘speech and its omissions,’ and then proceed to the point. If he finds that he has to jump several years forward, all that he has to do is warn his audience by saying ‘it does not take the child of a story long to grow up.” Digression of this form, whether external or internal to the story, is part of a continuous pattern of cycles within the larger cycle that is the African Oral Narrative.

Allusion is intimately related to ethos as it makes use of metaphors, symbols and imagery to which the group reacts and responds cognitively and emotionally. The level to which one responds is often dependent on the level to which one is socialized into the Worldview of the group. In the Akan context, “while children may listen and see the animals and other references to nature in their minds eye as physical realities, adults are supposed to focus on what these stand for, to see them as projections of their social world of reality, and to interpret references to nature as symbols, metaphors or poetic images in much the same way as they interpret the poetry of drum proverbs which similarly draws on nature for its poetic images.” The prerequisite cultural literacy (or cultural baggage as the case may be) is largely determinative of the extent to which one is able to interpret these symbolic and metaphorical allusions within the context of Worldview and react accordingly in the context of Ethos. Allusion in the African Cosmology is related to the dynamic pair of the seen and the unseen, the visible and invisible, the surface and the interior. This search for the unseen, metaphorized in the secret names, and its attendant rewards and problems are dramatized in the stories of Appendix B, Set VIII. Each of these elements appear largely, although not exclusively, in the complication phase of the development of the story and contribute in building towards the ultimate climax.

The climax of the Oral Narrative is adulthood and the noonday sun. This is the highest level that can be reached by any growing life, including the life of the story. As such the climax marks the culmination of interaction between the archetypal framework, analogous to the organizing principle of destiny in a human being’s life (as it informs the potential for the development of the story), and the imagination of the narrator, analogous to African concepts of freewill, chance and unpredictability. The life of the story is the life of a person. The resolution and subsequent conclusion are analogous to eldership that is marked by the wisdom learned through the passage of successive phases of the story, and death, which is marked by another formula enabling a successful transition out of the story. The conclusion of the story marks the story’s transition into the spiritual world as manifested in the individual psyche of each listener, where it will exert its influence upon the divine elements of chaos and order, freewill and destiny, that come into play in one’s life choices. If the story meets the needs delineated by ethos and cosmology, it will do so in this unseen spiritual realm and as such will become an ancestor. If it fails to do so, it will be forgotten, perhaps to be reborn under more fortunate circumstances (i.e. Perhaps with a better narrator). The sun sets, but it still exists. No matter how long the night, the dawn is sure to come. Analogous to the life of the human being and the life of the cosmos as conceptualized in the African Cosmology, the life of the story dynamically affects and is affected by the visible and invisible worlds. Just as the living human community is dynamically fused with the unborn and ancestral human community that connects this cycle of human existence, “contact is made within the storytelling ritual with divinity and with the cosmos at large.” The African Ethos informs the structure of the story itself, which must be a mirror reflection of the cyclical movement of the cosmos and of human life in the African Cosmological conception of reality. We find this same structure and cyclical movement in the African Aesthetic from Traditional Continental African music to the sermons of Black preachers in Mississippi.

Thus the story itself is a divine ritual reenactment and a divine reordering of contemporary reality, especially in lieu of the fact that human being is conceptualized as a divine entity. According to Richards,
The universe was created (is continually “recreated”) by a divine act. We participate in that act as we perform rituals in imitation of the Creator and aspects of the Creator (Olodumare and the Oris[ch61481]a, Onyame and the Abosom, and so forth).

The Oral Narrative in performance is the cyclical reenactment of ritual wherein the unexplainable is understood and chaos is made to be ordered within the logic of tradition. We, in the ritual of the Oral Narrative imitate the Creator and aspects of the creator, reestablishing and strengthening our link to the cosmos:

Ritual is, in a sense, the ultimate philosophical expression of the African world-view, for it is the modality within which the unity of the human and the divine is expressed, in which the unity of spirit and matter is perceived, and in which the divine moment is achieved. When we perform rituals as our ancestors did, we become our ancestors, and so transcend the boundaries of ordinary space and time, and the limitations of separation that they impose. When we call the spirits and they enter our bodies we symbolize in our being the joining of, and therefore communication between, two spheres of the universe: ‘heaven’ and the ‘earth.’

This act of connection and reconnection, the essence of the story itself, is dramatized and exemplified in Appendix B, Set IX, in the Akan story of “Aberewa and Her Children” and the Yoruba story, “Ìjàpá Insults Ìkamòdù, His Benefactor.” We see that in each of these stories, “the central characters are nearly always humans, or animals acting like humans...the basic situation depicted is fundamentally a human one, belonging primarily to this world.” The African Ethos, however, demands that this drama, reflective of the African cosmology, be enacted in such a way it’s very structural form is in harmony with the cyclical way in which all life is perceived. Thus, the Oral Narrative itself is a ritual of interaction with the seen and unseen, the visible and invisible, the sun that shines during the day and continues its life in the lower world only to be born again at the next storytelling session. With this understanding, beyond the surface paired Sets of Appendix A and Appendix B, we see that each of these stories, in its cosmologically determined form is similar to each of the others. This cosmology is inseparably linked to an ethos that imposes a responsibility on each Oral Narrator/Artist. This responsibility is to transpose the real world into one’s work in such a way as to “Reveal its essential connection with the unseen, giving to the everyday and the finite the quality of the obscure and of the infinite.”

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