Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers: Tradition and Invention in Mende Story Performance (Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture, Series Number 4)

The domei is a popular narrative art form among the Mende people of Sierra Leone. Although it is a traditional form, the narratives are not remembered or retold, but on each occasion the performers recreate out of a common stock of characters and plots domeisia, which are singular and sometimes brilliant expressions of a singular, and often brilliant, culture. In this book Donald Cosentino presents a large selection of these narratives, as he collected them in dramatic performance on the verandahs and around the cooking fires of a Mende village. The domei is told to please, and Dr Cosentino details the various elements that constitute the pleasure of an oral performance. But beneath the surface glitter of these ironic, horrifying, bawdy and haunting narrative performances, there is an intellectual hardness of argument and debate which shines through the domeisia included here. Dominating these performances, and emblematic of the entire artistic tradition, are the 'everywoman' figure of the Defiant Maid, Yombo, and the 'everyman' Stubborn Farmer, Kpana. Cover......Page 1 Frontmatter......Page 2 Contents......Page 10 List of figures......Page 11 Preface and acknowledgements......Page 12 The Mende......Page 14 Forms of `old talk'......Page 15 The performers......Page 21 The collection......Page 24 Transcription and translation......Page 27 2 - Mende mimesis......Page 29 Patterns in the duny?i......Page 34 Mattru......Page 42 3 - Image......Page 47 Appendix: Performances 3.1 to 3.13......Page 69 4 - The elements of performance......Page 101 Verbal conventions......Page 102 The allied arts......Page 113 Theatrics......Page 126 Appendix: Performances 4.1 to 4.11......Page 130 5 - Defiant maids......Page 157 Appendix: Performances 5.1 to 5.8......Page 177 6 - Stubborn farmers......Page 206 Appendix: Performances 6.1 to 6.6......Page 220 Select bibliography......Page 234 General index......Page 236 Index of performances......Page 239 Donald Cosentino. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. 221-222.