The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance

Scheub, Harold

ISBN 10: 0821419218 / ISBN 13: 9780821419212

Published by Ohio University Press, 2010

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance
• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0821419218
• ISBN 13: 9780821419212
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The oral and written traditions of the Africans of South Africa have provided an understanding of their past and the way the past relates to the present. These traditions continue to shape the past by the present, and vice versa. From the time colonial forces first came to the region in 1487, oral and written traditions have been a bulwark against what became 350 years of colonial rule, characterized by the racist policies of apartheid. The Uncoiling Python: South African Storytellers and Resistance is the first in-depth study of how Africans used oral traditions as a means of survival against European domination.

Africans resisted colonial rule from the beginning. They participated in open insurrections and other subversive activities in order to withstand the daily humiliations of colonial rule. Perhaps the most effective and least apparent expression of subversion was through indigenous storytelling and poetic traditions. Harold Scheub has collected the stories and poetry of the Xhosa, Zulu, Swati, and Ndebele peoples to present a fascinating analysis of how the apparently harmless tellers of tales and creators of poetry acted as front-line soldiers.

About the Author

Harold Scheub is Evjue-Bascom Professor of Humanities at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of many books, including Story, The Poem in the Story, Shadows, and A Dictionary of African Mythology: The Mythmaker as Storyteller.