ABSTRACT
Africa has been a battleground in the folklorist’s attempt to assert the autonomy of folklore. As a result, there has been much interdisciplinary debate surrounding the concept of African folklore between the late eminent folklorist Richard Dorson and literary scholars and anthropologists. The first debate arose in 1965, when Dorson was invited to conduct a folklore seminar in London by the Department of Africa of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London. He used the opportunity to speak out against W.H. Whiteley’s handling of African prose material in Whiteley’s book A Selection of African Prose; 1: Traditional Oral Texts, calling attention to the lack of comparative notes and motif references, which a folklorist would normally look for, and the imbalance of genres represented. Whiteley’s book was a lesson in “How not to publish folklore texts,” according to Dorson.
