FROM ORALITY TO PRINT: Construction of Nso identity in folk tales

Verbal and visual texts of traditional tales such as Lantum’s construct an image, albeit fictional, of a cultural group. There is no doubt that folklore is a significant major component of African oral tradition. In every way, African oral narratives including folktales have continued to flourish and captivate the interest of Western intellectuals such as Abrahams, Bascom, Dundes, Finnegan, Roger, and more. The mid-twentieth century, when African countries began winning their independence from the West, brought more prospects for the educated elites to participate in the research and transmission into print of their indigenous tales. The cover design of a work of fiction often creates expectations for what readers may encounter between the cover pages. Cannibalism is central in verbal text, although constructed as a necessity only in the time of famine, and the characters’ dialogue establishes that it is not typical to “make food” out of one’s mother.