Heroism and the Supernatural in the African Epic Toward a Critical Analysis

This article is a critical analysis of the role and function of the supernatural in African epics. It is necessitated by the persistent misconception and mis-representation of the African epic that argue that in the African epic, too much emphasis is put on the hero’s recourse to nonhuman means rather than on his natural force, which, in a Western conceptualization, typifies heroism. Therefore, the author’s main contention in this article is that the significance of the fantastic and its use as an essential element in the dramatic structure of African epics can be fully appreciated only against the cosmological back-ground of the societies that produce those heroic tales