Animal Tales from the Caribbean, livre ebook

These twenty-one animal tales from the Colombian Caribbean coast represent a sampling of the traditional stories that are told during all-night funerary wakes. The tales are told in the semi-sacred space of the patio (backyard) of homes as part of the funerary ritual that includes other aesthetic and expressive practices such as jokes, song games, board games, and prayer. In this volume these stories are situated within their performance contexts and represent a highly ritualized corpus of oral knowledge that for centuries has been preserved and cultivated by African-descendant populations in the Americas.

Ethnomusicologist George List collected these tales throughout his decades-long fieldwork amongst the rural costeños, a chiefly African-descendent population, in the mid-20th century and, with the help of a research team, transcribed and translated them into English before his death in 2008. In this volume, John Holmes McDowell and Juan Sebastián Rojas E. have worked to bring this previously unpublished manuscript to light, providing commentary on the transcriptions and translations, additional cultural context through a new introduction, and further typological and cultural analysis by Hasan M. El-Shamy. Supplementing the transcribed and translated texts are links to the original Spanish recordings of the stories, allowing readers to follow along and experience the traditional telling of the tales for themselves.

Acknowledgments Cuentos Costeños
Editors' Introductory Essay
George List's Introduction

The Stories
1. Mártara
2. The Little Goat
3. Of Aunt Vixen with Uncle Jaguar
4. The Excursion of Rabbit
5. The Pig Who Made Much Fun of the Donkey
6. A Humorous Tale of Rabbit
7. When Jaguar Wanted to Fight with Rabbit
8. The Man
9. Uncle Rabbit and Aunt Jaguar's Seven Children
10. Uncle Rabbit and Uncle Alligator
11. The Rabbit Who Wanted to be the Largest Animal in the World
12. The Cunning of Rabbit
13. The Saddling of Jaguar
14. When Rabbit Lost
15. Uncle Rabbit's Field
16. Rabbit and Vixen's Saloon
17. The Man Who Gathered Honey
18. The Quarrel Between Cock and Vixen
19. The Marriage of Monkey and Frog
20. Uncle Rabbit's Ears
21. When the Sun Baptized the Bat
Typology and Cultural Analysis / Hasan M. El-Shamy

Agradecimientos Cuentos Costeños
Ensayo Introductorio de los Editores
Introducción de George List

Los Cuentos
1. Mártara
2. El chivito
3. De Tía Zorra con Tío Tigre
4. La excursión del Conejo
5. El puerco que se burlaba mucho del burro
6. Chiste de Conejo
7. Cuando Tigre quiso pelear con Conejo
8. El hombre
9. Tió Conejo y los siete hijos de Tía Tigra
10. Tío Conejo y Tío Caimán
11. El conejo que quería ser el hombre más grande del mundo
12. La astucia de Conejo
13. La ensillada de Tigre
14. Cuento en que Conejo pierde
15. La roza de Tío Conejo
16. La cantina de Conejo y Zorra
17. El sacador de miel
18. La querella de Zorra con Gallo
19. El matrimonio de Machín con Rana
20. Las orejas de Tío Conejo
21. Cuando el sol bautizó al murcielago
Index