Sundiata and Friends

(another pilfering from my other trickster blog) Reading about African tricksters took me back to an African literature class I had several years ago. My exposure to the book "Sundiata" predates the movie "The Lion King" so I must confess I never saw the correlation, but there's a website that calls Sundiata the Lion King below. To summarize very briefly and ineloquently, Sundiata was the West African megastar epic hero some 700 or so years ago. His story is something like Charlemagne's, Gungadin's, Odysseus', or the like: in short, well, epic. It was told for years only by griots, who bore a strong relationship, incidentally, to court jesters, or perhaps bards is a better analogy. They were the royals' keepers of knowledge. To learn more go here: (http://www.princetonol.com/groups/iad/lessons/middle/sundiata.htm

Another book I remember from that class is "The Palm Wine Drinkard", which has many amusing tales about incidents at crossroads. These stories have "trickster" written all over them. The book includes such priceless chapter headings as "RETURN THE PARTS OF BODY TO THE OWNERS", "A FULL-BODIED GENTLEMAN REDUCED TO A HEAD", and
'THE FATHER OF GODS SHOULD FIND OUT WHEREABOUTS THE DAUGHTER OF THE HEAD OF THE TOWN WAS." (see a glimpse of the book itself at http://www.africanreviewofbooks.com/100best/100bestsamples/tutuola.html)