Abstract:
This paper explores the utilitarian values of the Sudanese folktales on rearing the children and fixing their identity. Moreover, it investigates the role of the storyteller in attracting the audience to be attentive listener for the folktales. Although the modern life with its crowded programs of the children in multi-media drive away the children from inheriting arts which are colonized by other programmed project. This paper finds out the substitution of the children's program due to the modernity of the life after investigating the vanishing sounds of the storyteller in the modern life putting the modern media in account. The problem of this study investigates the qualities of the storytellers, the characters, language, and the thematic aspects of a selection of folktales; and to what extend influence on children identity. This study aims to find out the effect of the folktales on the audience (children) in various aspects. It limits itself in four Sudanese folktales, two from the Western Sudan and two from Northern Sudan. two has been taken from Abdalla Eltybe book (Sudanese Folktales), and other tow have been taken from real storyteller. It is intended to form link with the oral narrating traditions and the identity and find out the influence of the geographical location on the language and tradition of the people on their folktales. The study has followed the descriptive and analytic methodology for analyzing the data of the study (folktales) in addition the narrative approach is used. The study has reached the following points: 1- Maternal community is intensively involved in the folktales meanwhile the real community is paternal society. 2- Folktale represents fertile ground for children to deal with literature later. 3- Folktale enlarges the imagination of the children. 4- Folktale enhances the social values implicitly and influence on the children indirectly. This study recommends that the government should adopt the folktales and dramatize them in order to compete the means of programme that means television should replace the place of the storyteller.
