A contribution to highlight the merit of the African tale stemming from the oral tradition, so that it'll become an integral part of the national cultural heritages : Ivory Coast as an example

Abstract

To join in making oral literature acknowledged is one of the concerns of the Regional House of African Story-tellers, which is being created in YAMOUSSOUKRO, the political capital of the Ivory Coast. Real megaphone, its mission consists in collecting tales, spreading them in two languages, and so doing, inscribing them in the cultural heritage of the Ivory Nation. Collecting tales by word of mouth, as so many modest accounts of a time which "comes and goes", tales voiced by story-tellers to their own rhythm so as to carry us away even better, and spreading this "literature" in the national native tongues as well as in French are two of the main actions we intend to de scribe in this piece of work. We chose the Ivory Coast where six collecting actions were carried out from 1999 to 2006 and 132 tales videotaped. The first 27 tales, gathered in baoulé, were filed, on a trial basis, according to their subjects. The 105 tales set out here make up the database of the present corpus. 91 of them were transcribed in baoulé and sénoufo , the two national tongues in which they were collected, and then translated literally into French. . Fourteen of them, collected in the national tongue bété, were translated exclusively into written French. After transcribing and translating had been achieved, an identification sheet, created for each one of the story-tellers, was filled in, and every piece of information was recorded in view of being used later on.. In conclusion, though the results of this work cannot be overemphasized, considering the modest size of the selection, yet we have at our disposal a tool which will permit eventually the exploitation of new pieces of information. Finally, given that the aim of this research work is to take part in the safeguard and the acknowledgement of the oral literature of this warm hearted country, we do hope that it will reach beyond national boundaries and inspire the French-spoken world.