Epic of Sundiata

Sunjata (/sʊnˈdʒɑːtə/; Manding languages: ߛߏ߲߬ߖߘߊ߬ Sònjàdà, also referred to as Sundiata or Son-Jara; Arabic: ملحمة سوندياتا; French: L'épopée de Soundjata)[1] is an epic poem of the Malinke people that tells the story of the hero Sundiata Keita (died 1255), the founder of the Mali Empire. The epic is an instance of oral tradition, going back to the 13th century and narrated by generations of jelis (griots). There is no single or authoritative version.[2] Material pertaining to the epic first began to be collected during the early 20th century in French Sudan, notably by the French elite school École William Ponty, resulting in the "modern" version of the tale as considered standard today, based on the oral account by Djeli Mamoudou Kouyate, a jeli or traditional oral historian, translated into French by Djibril Tamsir Niane in 1960.[3][4]

  1. ^ Boase-Beier, Jean; Fisher, Lina; Furukawa, Hiroko (26 June 2018). The Palgrave Handbook of Literary Translation. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-75753-7.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Keim, Curtis A. (2005). "Rev. of Sunjata: A West African Epic of the Mande Peoples". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 38 (1): 112–113. ProQuest 229648963.
  4. ^ Bulman, Stephen (November 2017). "A New Epic of Ancient Mali: Sunjata: A New Prose Version. Edited and translated by David C. Conrad". The Journal of African History. 58 (3): 548–550. doi:10.1017/S0021853717000652. S2CID 165497481.