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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
 WorldCat |
| Title: | Masking Sunjata: A Hermeneutical Critique |
| Author: | Jansen, Jan |
| Year: | 2000 |
| Periodical: | History in Africa |
| Volume: | 27 |
| Pages: | 131-141 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic term: | Mali |
| Subjects: | traditional rulers masquerades epics (form) History and Exploration |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3172110 |
| Abstract: | Among the rich legacy of African oral traditions, the Sunjata epic is still one of the most complex phenomena. While most scholarly writings have focused on the Sunjata epic as a text, this approach limits the range of possible interpretations of the Sunjata tradition as a source for African history. The present paper argues that several clues in the epic refer to masks and mask dances, and that this dimension challenges historians to rethink their ideas about the origin, content, and function of the Sunjata epic. The paper first places the geographical area in which Sunjata traditions are told in an ecological perspective, thus proposing an alternative to the political unity of the Mali empire as an explanation for the spread and stability of the Sunjata epic. Then it outlines a number of remarkable 'anomalies' in the prestigious Kela version of the epic, demonstrating some pitfalls of a comparative approach, as well as the necessity to study each Sunjata text as a sociopolitical statement. The argument is supported by ethnographic material on a mask dance related to the Sunjata epic. The paper concludes that literary approaches of the Sunjata epic have narrowed discussion too much to the aesthetic and textual dimensions of the texts. Notes, ref. |
