Fauna in archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures

Moyo, Madhlozi

Fauna in archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures

Doctoral Thesis

2016

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Classical Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

Animals play an important role in the communication of wisdom. In songs, proverbs, aphorisms, riddles and other oral modes of communication, animals sometimes play the roles of human beings. Homeric similes, Hesiodic and Aesopic fables, and numerous oral figures of speech in Greek lyric poetry often incorporate animals in their figurative language. Likewise, Kalanga folktales, proverbs, and other didactic modes attest to the importance of animals within this culture as vehicles to teach moral lessons. This tendency is visible among many cultures across the world. As such, the broad concerns of this thesis are to compare the way Archaic Greek and Kalanga wisdom literatures resort to animal imagery in the dissemination of moral lessons. The study evaluates the way animals are deployed as metaphors to signify and express human actions and human attitudes in oral thought. In a narrow sense, I study the deployment of animals insofar as they shed light upon the human attributes of cleverness and stupidity; the use of animals' characters in political commentary; as well as in the economic and erotic didactics in Archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures. Judging from the frequency of their appearance, it seems that animals are one of the preferred ways through which people offer insights into themselves. Commenting on the human habit of integrating animals into one's religious and moral views, Peter Lum says 'The animal world seems to the mind of primitive man to be only a very short step from the human.' This dissertation seeks to arrive at answers to a number of questions through a comparative study of selections from the two traditions. What are the premises and presuppositions behind the deployment of each animal in such literature? What are the bases for building a human character on an animal? How do we compare and contrast the human and animal natures? And, what makes an animal assume a specific role, and not another, in folklore? What ecological and ethical concerns can be observed in this type of literature? Most importantly, what similarities are there between Greek and Kalanga oral modes of expression? By revealing similarities in animal imagery between two diverse wisdom traditions, this work explores what may be described as a natural, cross-cultural basic component of didactic poetry: a common denominator that gets to the root of archaic wisdom. Furthermore, as a poetic element seemingly rooted in the realities of agrarian society, such symbolism leads us to consider whether the moral authority it represents is purely poetic or whether it actually holds cultural capital. This exercise entails using the dynamics of a living tradition to understand more about one we access through texts and commentaries.

Keywords

Classics

Reference:

Collections

PhD / Doctoral

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