Exploring the Use of Folklore in Modern African Literature

Abstract

The study aimed to analyzes the use of folklore in the African novels. The researcher chose two of the most distinguished novels of African novels, (Things Fall Apart) by Chinua Achebe and (The Wedding of Zein) by Al-TayebSalih, to analyse the depth of such novel the researcher gave light and clarified the dialectical relationship between literature and folklore and explored the aesthetic and cognitive relationship in the use of folklore in the novel as literary tool that adds an aesthetic and cognitive depth to the literary text,as a tools to help in analyze the answered one of the critical questions: What is heritage, which confronts intellectual and cognitive systems with their different components and philosophical and social references, because this question has become connected and interacting with the question of contemporary and modernity. Heritage has become a reference value for nations. Therefore, we find him a lot of definitions. In this research, the researcher tried to review them all. It can be extracted from it with a general definition as follows, It all that is transmitted of customs, traditions, sciences, etiquette and the like, from one generation to the next. It includes all arts and traditions, such as poetry, singing, music, dance, stories, tales, legends, beliefs and proverbs that are carried on by the common people,the customs and traditions practiced by the community in its joys and sorrows, so that the researcher recommended and emphasized the importance of including the study of folklore as one of the branches of literature, whose mission is to preserve the people's national spirit, an aesthetic store of the inherited values and ideals of peoples, and an aesthetic bearer of oral and written culture.