Dahomean narrative
Subtitle: a cross-cultural analysis
By: [collected by] Melville J. and Frances S. Herskovits ; foreword by Jane I. Guyer and David L. Easterbrook.
Contributors: Herskovits, Melville J. 1895-1963.; Herskovits, Frances S. 1897-
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Evanston, Ill
Language: eng
Number of pages: 490
Subjects: Tales -- Benin.; Oral tradition -- Benin.; Mythology, African.
Description: When this book was first published in 1958, Melville Herskovits, with his wife and collaborator, Frances, had spent over twenty years studying the social networks, religion, music, and oral traditions of the peoples of West Africa and their descendants in the New World. Dahomey, the major site of their Africa work, is in the country now known as the Republic of Benin.

This volume, published now as a companion piece to Northwestern University Press's best-selling West African Folktales, has two goals: to provide basic texts of material collected in the field; and to show how they were collected, analyzed, and theorized in the anthropological and folklore disciplinary traditions of Herskovits's day. The result is a wide-ranging collection, culled from an entire narrative tradition, that remains unique among anthropological publications.
Notes: Originally published 1958, in series: Northwestern University Africa studies ; no. 1, with new foreword.