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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:'Different people just have different minds': a personal attempt to understand Ju/'hoan storytelling aesthetics
Author:Biesele, MeganISNI
Year:1995
Periodical:Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa
Volume:7
Issue:2
Pages:1-17
Language:English
Geographic term:Southern Africa
Subjects:San
folk tales
Abstract:In the Ju/'hoan oral tradition many versions of 'the same tale' exist. In this article the author illustrates the process by which Ju/'hoan storytellers clarified her thinking as she recorded their tales and tried to understand whether and how the tales informed their lives. She starts with an excerpt from one of the stories told by a woman some twenty years ago, and eventually moves on to a story from a Ju/'hoan man she worked with in Namibia from 1987 to 1993. In both cases she shows how the storytellers' life experiences and personalities influenced their art. In a deeper sense, she shows how she discovered that the life stories and folktales told by these storytellers both reflected and called into being their contemporary Ju/'hoan culture. Bibliogr.
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