Abstract:
This study involved 100 Akamba tales as recorded in
Mbiti's Akamba stories, and Kieti and Coughlin's Barking,
you'll be eaten! It had a fourfold purpose: establishing
the morphological framework of the corpus, setting down
their message, testing their coherence and gauging the
degree of their analogy to the biblical worldview. Thus,
three research questions, from which five hypotheses were
drawn, led the study to five main areas of investigation.
Designed as a literary research, this structural analysis
rested upon BremondJs morphological model, and Paulme and
Cauvin's typological patterns. Both paracompositional and
compositional structures were analyzed. It became clear
that the narrative economy tended to reproduce all the
structural types thus far known.
From its dual perspective, the tale genre seemed to
express a two-emphasis theme, nine various frequencies of
the life-view and three ideals. Despite a few
inconsistencies, the commonsensical worldview of tales
showed a significant extent of analogy with the biblical
worldview. Three corrective ways were suggested and
practical recommendations proposed in view of cultural
revitalization.
