Heroism and the Supernatural in the African Epic

Mariam Konaté Deme

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136932649
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: African Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

There exists a strong tendency within Western literary criticism to either deny the existence of epics in Africa or to see African literatures as exotic copies of European originals. In both cases, Western criticism has largely failed to acknowledge the distinctiveness of African literary aesthetics. This book revises traditional literary canons in examining the social, cultural and emotional specificity of African epics. Mariam Konate Deme highlights the distinguishing features that characterize the African epic, emphasizing the significance of the fantastic and its use as an essential element in the dramatic structure of African epics. As Deme notes, the fantastic can be fully appreciated only against the cosmological background of the societies that produce those heroic tales. This book not only contributes to the scholarship on African oral literature, but also adds reshapes our understanding of heroic literature in general.

1
Introduction

The motivation for this study springs from the realization that of all the features of the African epic, the supernatural factor seems to have been the least fully explored in the literature. Since Bowra’s work (1964), the very existence of the epic in Africa has been denied by many Eurocentric scholars due mainly to the very presence of the supernatural in the genre. Typically, such scholars tend to dismiss the existence of the heroic epic in Africa largely because of the role the supernatural plays in African oral literature. However, the tendency for human beings to appeal to forces outside and beyond the natural as coping strategies to adverse life situations can be traced back to antiquity. For example, we are aware of how the ancient Kemetic people implored their gods; and made ritual sacrifices to them in order to achieve specific objectives. (Abarry & Asante,1996: 98) This should not sound strange to any serious student of African culture. For, in the African worldview, the realm of the visible and the invisible do not constitute two completely separate entities; these entities combine to form one dynamic entity. Welsh-Asante stresses this harmony between the two worlds when she states,

The process of perception in an African centered worldview combines the sacred and profane, mind and body, the natural and the supernatural as organic dynamic entities, able to manifest themselves in all sorts of combinations and disciplines.(Welsh-Asante, 1993: 17)

However, it is this ubiquitous reference and appeal to forces beyond human scope that has led to the questioning of the very essence of the African epic. Despite the fact that the presence of marvelous elements and heroic actions are widely considered as being distinguishable characteristics of the epic in general, such characteristics, ironically, are those that are exploited by Western scholars to deny the literary and historical values of the African epic. Moreover, except for Isidore Okpewho’s (1976) article entitled “Africa and the Epic: Comparative Thoughts on the Supernatural Machine”, and more recently, Mugyabuso Mulokozi’s (2002) book, The African Epic Controversy: Historical, Philosophical and Aesthetic Perspectives on Epic Poetry and Performance; there seems not to be any comprehensive and extensive study that specifically deals with the role, importance and functions of the supernatural in the African epic. Most of the studies that do mention the supernatural in African epics (Okpewho 1976&1979; Coulibaly 1997; Ayivor 1997; Belcher, 1999) do not analyze the supernatural as a subject on its own, but rather as a sub-theme in the hero’s life. The issue of the supernatural is almost always dealt with in relation to the hero, thus denigrating its impact on the society at large. It is for this reason that more attention needs to be devoted to the study of the hero’s supernatural powers, and their impacts on the heroic tale as a whole. The supernatural as an analyzable structural device and characteristic of the African epic has not so far been extensively investigated in the scholarship on the genre. This is not surprising, considering that the African heroic epic has only recently become the object of scholarly inquiry.

Therefore, the major objectives of this study are:

1. To offer an analytical approach to the study of the supernatural which would strengthen the literary and historical values of the oral epic in Africa.

2. To clarify the traditional African view of the role that the supernatural holds in the epic producing societies.

3. To elucidate the dynamics of myth, magic, and religion in the African epic.

4. To look at different instances in which the supernatural intervenes in the African epic

5. To analyze the various supernatural devices used by the hero or his opponents in order to achieve victory.

6. To analyze the hero’s supernatural powers and how they manifest themselves in his life.

7. To examine the use or misuse that the hero of the African epic makes of his heavenly endowed powers and its impact on him and the society at large.

Consequently, this study critically examines the role and functions of the supernatural in the African epic. During the last forty years, scholars of African epic have been engaged in debates regarding the existence of the epic itself, its definition, and the hero’s characteristics. Nonetheless, not much attention has been devoted to the study of key structural elements of the epic such as the supernatural, journey, fate and destiny, the role of women, the role of songs and dance. This study is therefore a modest attempt to fill some of the existing gaps in the field by focusing on the supernatural element in the selected African epics.

However, before we proceed, it seems necessary to pause and review some of the issues that seem to have preoccupied previous scholars of the genre since Bowra’s work (1964). Over the last three decades, a sustained interest in the study of African oral epic has generated one of the most significant developments within the field of the continent’s literature. Many Eurocentric scholars have for a long time denied the existence of epics in Africa. Basic to the debate on the existence of an African epic is that of definition and taxonomy. European scholars have always tried to apply their literary concepts to African literature in order to validate the existence or non-existence of certain literary genres, without finding out whether the concepts do exist or not in African literary tradition. Studies on the epic, its definition, characteristic types and significance abound in literary criticism as Africanist and non-Africanist literary scholars argue on whether African oral traditions did produce heroic tales or not. Some definitions of the African epic put emphasis on the context, while others deal with its literary treatment. Therefore, we have a wide range of definitions that are used to qualify the African epic. These definitions rather distinguish the epic from other literary genres, instead of taking into consideration the characteristics of the epic itself. Christiane Seydou, whose research on the Pular epics are extensive, states that “this hesitation to define the epic as a distinct genre in itself reflects the discomfort which arises in attempting to subject the epic to a self-contained, purely textual analysis” (Folklore- Forum 16 1, (1983): 48) The main concern of many Folklorists has been, in the words of Bauman, “to study the tale at the expense of its teller, telling, and reception.” (Bauman, 1977: 64)

As a result, more emphasis is put on the text itself, rather than on the context of the performance. Thus, the dynamics of the performance along with various narrative devices such as the setting of the story, the bard’s use of repetition, his arrangement and presentation of the story, the audience’s reactions (gestures, laughter, applause), the songs, the dance, the musical instruments, the call and response, which actually constitute the literary and aesthetic context on which the perception and appreciation of the oral performance depend, are either downplayed, removed, or simply ignored. The epic in Africa is an oral form of communication intended to be performed in front of a live audience. Epics are a means of communication that carries the historical and cultural experiences of a given society. Epics represent the worldview that each society has, and as products of society, they are intended for cultural assimilation. Mulokozi’s 2002 book emphasizes the significance of performance and context as a crucial element of the African epic. According to him,

The term “context” embraces two situations: the socio-historical context and the performance context. The performance context, which gives us the performance characteristics of epoch, changes with every performance, while the socio-historical context is relatively more stable. The socio-historical context embraces the historical and geographical setting of the story, which may be remote in time, as well as the successive contexts that have influenced and reshaped the particular epic in varying epochs up to the present time. Once this factor is recognized, the other features easily fall in place: for they are variable and dependant on the vagaries of context. (Mulokozi, 2002: 4)

Epics thus, just like any other literary genre, are part and parcel of the societies that produce them. As far as the study of the supernatural in the African epic is concerned, the belief systems of the societies that produced those epics extremely important because they relate to the place that the use of magical powers hold in their heroic conceptualization becomes.

The publishing of long before ignored heroic epic texts narrating the lives of great African nation builders and cultural heroes such as Sundiata of Mali, Askia Mohammed of Songhai, Shaka of the Zulu, Mwindo of the Banyanga and Ozidi of the Ijo and many others has tremendously helped bring to light the fact that the epic is indeed a characteristic component of the oral traditions of Africa. But it is Djibril Tamsir Niane’s Sundiata an Epic of Old Mali (1960) that represents one of the earliest successful attempts to faithfully translate an African oral epic into a written art form. This book narrates the heroic epic of the thirteenth century king of the empire of Mali. This epic is well documented through diverse sources and still remains a classical reference in the African literary history. It has become part of a shared legacy that links many Mandé speaking people across West Africa, through Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Mali, Sénégal, The Gambia, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana, and Burkina-Faso. This epic is still alive and sung in parts of these countries that once formed the Mali Empire.

In addition, works by Biebuyck and Mateene (1971), Bird and others (1974), Gordon (1974), Johnson (1979), Biebuyck (1972, 1976, 1978), Okpewho (1977, 1979), Johnson (1980), El-Miskin (1981), and Kesteloot (1972, 1975, 1978, 1997) all attempted to prove that epics are undoubtedly a significant part of the African oral tradition and history. More importantly, their works clearly make the point that since African epics constitute products of particular social, cultural, and religious contexts, they should not be expected to be the copycat of European epics.

Paradoxically, many so-called European experts in African literature such as Bowra (1964), and Finnegan (1970) have always questioned the existence of the epic in African oral tradition. In Heroic Poetry, Bowra has claimed that the “more primitive societies” of Africa and other parts of the world, although they “show a real admiration for active and generous manhood, [their poems] come from peoples who have no heroic poetry and have never advanced beyond panegyric and laments. The intellectual effort required for such an advance seems to have been beyond their powers.” (Bowra,1964: 11) Such a biased comment is not surprising since Bowra, like many other Eurocentric scholars before him always contended that Africans are childlike people with low mental and intellectual capacities. About a decade later, Finnegan, (1970) asserts that the epic “in the more obvious sense of a relatively long narrative poem” is foreign to Africa. Finnegan is very skeptical about the existence of African epics and dismisses them with the claim that “All in all, epic poetry does not seem to be a typical African form …” (Finnegan, 1970: 110) It is important to mention that out of five hundred and fifty-eight pages that constitute this book, Finnegan devotes only two and a half pages to the epic.

Since then, many others followed such trends. Such Eurocentric scholars tend to be limited by their own ethnocentric mindsets about Africans and are unable to accept that Africans are capable of producing epics (one of the most complex forms of oral and written literature) not only because they define heroic tales on a strictly textual level, but also because they consider them to be the monopoly of “civilized” and “cultured” people like themselves. They believe that Africans and other “primitive people” do not have the mental capabilities to design the more complicated structural and aesthetic devices that are reflected in oral epics. Therefore, this kind of approach to the study of African verbal art “implicitly insinuates the assumption that, to put it crudely, ‘primitive peoples’ (i.e. Africans) have no idea of the aesthetics.”(Finnegan, 1970: 331) They can only come up with simple and primitive versions of the type of narrative that Westerners would call heroic tales. “Finnegan’s major error,” according to Mulokozi’s (2002) book “was to use purely textual criteria to gauge oral performances, which usually exist only as momentary events rather than fixed texts.” He goes on to say that,” she confused the written renderings of originally oral texts with the authentic, unwritten oral epic, and thus lost sight of one fundamental definitive element in oral epic, that is context.” (Mulokozi, 2002: 1)

However, J. Knappert, an expert in Swahili epic contradicts Bowra and Finnegan on the existence of oral epics in African when he describes his following experience:

Epic is, more than any other literary form, a reality that one must have experienced in order to recognize it. Swahili epic poetry displays a grandeur of diction, a richness of style, a stately rhythm, a splendeur of imagery, a sweep of vision that make it quite evident one has come face to face with the real epic poetry. This is, of course a personal statement, but that is inevitable in literature. (Knappert in Gorog-Karady, 1982: 32)

Nevertheless, in the course of time, the scholars who affirmed opninions similar to Bowra and Finnegan’s gained the lower hand, making it quite needless for us to get into such a debate.

There is undoubtedly something inherently wrong in always wanting to make the literature of other parts of the world fit European stylistic models as if Europe were the one and only valid reference. I share Ben-Amos’s following sentiment in this regard:

The Literariness of African verbal art does not depend upon its similarities or differences with other literary traditions. Rather, it is possible to discern its aesthetic qualities, as the African people do, by relating epics to other forms of communication in culture and to the language of other verbal performances. The poetics of the African epic, in other words, has its basis in the poetic system of each culture. (Africana Journal, 7 (1980): 69)

Instead of defining African epics by comparing them to European ones or to other literary genres, it is high time that we shifted the equation and started using the inherent characteristics of the African epic itself in order to reach a definition that takes into account the cultural realities of African societies.

As seen in the previous pages, there is a need to move the discussion of the African epic into other directions. This book is then intended to isolate and critically evaluate the meaning and significance of the supernatural in the African oral epic.

Five hypotheses guide the present study. First, the supernatural is a sinequa none condition for the existence of the epic. Ayivor underscores this fact when he states that the heroic tale is “informed and shaped by the supernatural which dominates African oral epic tradition.” (Research in African Literature, 28 (1997): 53) The belief in the supernatural is what gives the African epic its unique heroic proportion. The presence of the marvelous, the fantastic is part and parcel of the dramatic story line and does not take anything away from the veracity of the tale or its heroism. Secondly, the use of the supernatural as a means to cope with man’s original weakness constitutes a belief system that is still widely held today in many African societies. The existence of the marvelous and the recourse to supernatural means by the hero symbolizes his consciousness of his own weaknesses and limitations as a human being and his desire to transcend them. Thirdly, the significance of the supernatural cannot be fully appreciated without taking into account the worldview that regulates the given society in which the epic is produced. Fourthly, the supernatural serves as a part in the dramatic structure of the epic. Finally, and more importantly, the use of the supernatural in African oral epics conforms to one of the most widespread beliefs related to chieftaincy in traditional African societies, which is the divine nature of kingship.

This study mainly deals with the literary and stylistic values and functions of the supernatural in the African epic. I have decided to base my discussion on five well- established, well-documented and orally transmitted heroic epics. My major focus will be on Sundiata, Askia Mohammed, Ozidi Saga, and Mwindo Epic and Emperor Shaka the Great: A Zulu Epic. I might some...

Table of contents

• African Studies
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Role and Function of the Supernatural
• 3 The Supernatural in African Epics
• 4 The Hero’s Use of Supernatural Devices
• 5 The Hero’s Excesses
• 6 Women as the Bearers of Supernatural Powers in the African Epic
• 7 Conclusion and Recommendations for Further Study
• Bibliography
• Index