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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Yoruba market dynamics and the aesthetics of negotiation in female precolonial narrative tradition |
| Author: | Sekoni, Ropo |
| Year: | 1994 |
| Periodical: | Research in African Literatures |
| Volume: | 25 |
| Issue: | 3 |
| Pages: | 33-45 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Nigeria |
| Subjects: | Yoruba trickster tales women economics Cultural Roles literature Labor and Employment Sex Roles |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3819844 |
| Abstract: | The main objective of this study is to identify, characterize, and interpret the central role of Yoruba market dynamics (a female-dominated culture) in the development of the Yoruba aesthetic preference for a unitive, nondualistic depiction of the human world. The primary data for this investigation are drawn from the female-dominated (though not female-specific) trickster-tale tradition of the Yoruba (Nigeria). The article first deals with the dynamics of interaction in Yoruba markets, which can be characterized as dialogic, defined by the exchange and interchange of signs as means of constructing reality. Then it describes the interconnection of the aesthetics of market transaction and the prevalence of ambivalent, incorporative, fluid, and flexible protagonists in trickster tales. The article shows that the emphasis on alterability in trickster tales is in consonance with the emphasis on fluidity and flexibility in the Yoruba market space. Just as women engage in communication in the market by negotiating not only the value of their wares but also their roles as vendor and buyer, so does the trickster-tale genre reflect the two-sidedness and yet incorporative or unitive character of the trickster protagonist. Bibliogr. |
