Trama e riassunto di Canti e racconti giamaicani

A chi è rivolto

You will enjoy this if you love trickster tales, folk songs, the sound of spoken dialect, or the daily life of Caribbean villages. Storytellers, singers and teachers will find plenty to read aloud.

Che cos’è questo libro

Who is Annancy, and why do Jamaican field workers roll on the ground laughing when his name comes up? He is a spider who walks like a man, a thief with a cleft palate and an enormous appetite. The hoes stop clicking, the laughter starts, and a storyteller begins.

Jamaican Song and Story was gathered by Walter Jekyll and published in 1906. He lived in the hills behind Kingston and wrote the tales down from men and boys in his employ, in their own words. He added the tunes, notes on speech and custom, and a preface by the folklorist A. Werner. You get fifty-one Annancy tales, then digging sings, ring tunes and dance tunes.

Questions about Canti e racconti giamaicani

Who is Annancy?

Annancy is a trickster who walks as a man and takes the form of a spider. He is greedy and sly, speaks quickly through his nose, and his name comes from the Ashanti word for spider.

What does Jack Mantora, I choose none mean?

It is the formula that ends most Annancy tales. Jekyll suggests the teller means that no one in the circle is singled out for the beating or fate that the characters receive.

Where do the stories come from?

Werner's preface finds African roots, especially from West Africa, mixed with European fairy tales such as Bluebeard, The Three Pigs and Ali Baba. Some tales may have travelled by several routes and been reshaped locally.