Themes and Settings in Nigeria’s Heritage of Folk Narrative

Abstract

This paper, explores Nigeria’s heritage of folk narrative as elicited from the outcome of the pan-Nigerian folktale-collection research sponsored by the Dr Bukar Usman Foundation in 2013. The nation-wide research lasted for three years and its outcomes have been collated, edited and published in five voluminous books by the author of this paper. The paper, part of the author’s A Selection of Nigerian Folktales: Themes and Settings, is his introductory insight into the nature of themes and settings found in thousands of folktales collected from folktale traditions across Nigeria. The paper is in six parts. In part one, he provides a historical survey of folk literature in Nigeria. In part two, the author states and analyses the significance and defining traits of the folktale genre. The author’s motivations for embarking on the research as well as his research methodology are discussed in part three. The cultural and narrative similarities found in the about 4,000 tales collected from communities across Nigeria are highlighted in part four. Part five discusses issues connected with the classification of the collected tales; it throws light into the author’s decision to classify the 700 tales of his A Selection of Nigerian Folktales: Themes and Settings into 18 classes. The author’s concluding remarks constitute part six. It should be noted that all references to specific folktales, unless otherwise stated, are pointing to folktales published in A Selection of Nigerian Folktales: Themes and Settings, the first published book of the five books that emerged from the author’s momentous nationwide folktales research effort.