Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Haring, Lee

Titel

How to Read a Folktale : The ‘Ibonia’ Epic From Madagascar

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• How to Read a Folktale offers the first English translation of Ibonia, a spellbinding tale of old Madagascar. Ibonia is a folktale on epic scale. Much of its plot sounds familiar: a powerful royal hero attempts to rescue his betrothed from an evil adversary and, after a series of tests and duels, he and his lover are joyfully united with a marriage that affirms the royal lineage. These fairytale elements link Ibonia with European folktales, but the tale is still very much a product of Madagascar. It contains African-style praise poetry for the hero; it presents Indonesian-style riddles and poems; and it inflates the form of folktale into epic proportions. Recorded when the Malagasy people were experiencing European contact for the first time, Ibonia proclaims the power of the ancestors against the foreigner.