Board of Trustees, Boston University

West African Folk Tales by Jack BerryReview by: Dan McCallThe International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1992), p. 407Published by: Boston University African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/219397 .

Accessed: 09/05/2014 14:08

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Boston University African Studies Center and Board of Trustees, Boston University are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The International Journal of African Historical Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.103 on Fri, 9 May 2014 14:08:35 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

BOOK REVIEWS 407

WEST AFRICAN FOLK TALES. By Jack Berry. Evanston: University of Illinois Press, 1991 . Pp. xxvi, 229; notes, guide to pronunciation, index. $12.95 paper, $37.50 cloth.

Included here as a Preface is Berry's "Spoken Art in West Africa," copyright 1961. Tales were collected by Berry from West Africans as a part of his linguistic researches, at least as early as 1952/1953 when I met him while he was working on dictionaries of Ga and Twi (later published). In his teaching career in England, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, and in the United States at Northwestern University, where he was the first chairperson of the Linguistics Department, he continued collecting tales from students from Africa.

Berry was first and foremost a linguist. Peculiarities of the spoken language were often more interesting to him than what was said. Sitting next to him at an Africanist conference once, I looked over to see what notes he was writing; they were pronunciations of words, idioms, structure of phrases, but nothing of the ideas contained in the paper being orally delivered. Tales, at first, were for Berry convenient utterances, lengthy enough to give him material to analyze linguistically.

Eventually the tales themselves became significant as "spoken art." He then began to compare the versions he had collected with other versions that had been published; he gives the names of the Africans from whom he collected each tale.

These are stories to be read for enjoyment; Berry was at pains to preserve in translation the original tone of the telling. For the readers of this journal, however, it is unfortunate that none of the stories collected were oral traditions with historical import.

Spears says that about 1970, Berry began working on the translations for publication. His project had two phases; this represents the first. The second was to compare motifs and stylistic devices in these tales with those in tales in other parts of the world; Berry's death in 1980 came before completing that phase.

The work of Richard Spears in preparing Berry's manuscripts for publication is a tribute to the memory of a fine scholar. Let this review likewise be a tribute to a friend and colleague.

DAN MCCALL

Boston University

This content downloaded from 194.29.185.103 on Fri, 9 May 2014 14:08:35 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions