The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga

Download or read book The Mwindo Epic from the Banyanga written by Daniel Biebuyck and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-07-28 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The feats of the hero Mwindo are here glorified in the bilingual text of an epic which was sung and narrated in a Bantu language and acted out by a member of the Nyanga tribe in the remote forest regions of eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Admirably structured, coherent, and richly poetic, the epic is in prose form, interspersed with song and proverbs in verse. An example of the classic tradition of oral folk literature, the tale has important implications for the comparative study of African culture, as the text provides profound insights into the social structure, value system, linguistics, and cosmology of this African people.