Classifying Nigerian Folktales: Ethnographic Approaches

Abstract

This paper is about how ethnographic context, rather than external classificatory yardsticks, was used by the author to arrive at the categories he utilized in classifying the 4000 tales that emerged from the pan-Nigerian tale-collection project that took place from 2013 to 2016. The project, sponsored by the Dr Bukar Usman Foundation, resulted into the publication of three monumental tomes, A Selection of Nigerian Folktales: Themes and Settings (787 pages), People, Animals, Spirits and Objects: 1000 Folk Stories of Nigeria (939 pages) and Gods and Ancestors: Mythic Tales of Nigeria (221 pages), all of which were published in 2018 and have greatly increased interest in the study of oral literature and other aspects of folklore in Nigeria’s tertiary institutions. The paper presents the step-by-step methods, inspired by perspectives obtained from the tale-bearing communities, used by the author in classifying the tales featured in each of the three books. The paper’s ethnographic approaches, in illustrating the author’s belief that the nature of the tales collected from a given tale-collection exercise should determine the type and number of classes under which the tales should be grouped, constitute operational methods other tale-collectors may want to adopt.