Sundiata Textual Analysis In English

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Irrespective of the polyvalent textual nuances and the variations in narration, the story of Sundiata is basically the story of a prince whose birth as a prodigy king was prophesied in very strange circumstances that eventually came to be. His birth, his early life as a cripple, his exile and his return as a powerful king after conquering the powerful Sosso king – Sumanguru are the unmistakable episodes of every version.
Dani Kouyaté’s film version of the Sundiata story is basically that of Griot Kuyateh’s attempt to leave his village, Wagadu, to teach a teenager – Mabo - the history of his ancestor and about the the pride of his roots as a prince. This teaching comes against the background of a formal school education which followed the scripts …show more content…

The first part (1-14) is the preliminary mythical reality of Wagadu where the story takes off with a direct narrative voice accompanied by vivid footage of the landscapes, of how the world began and how a man – Maghan Kon Fatta – stepped out to define himself as the head of all humanity. In what seems a ritual comissioning of the Griot Kuyateh after this introductory scene at Wagadu, the griot is visited in his sleep by the master hunter and from that point he gets up and takes up the mission to go to the city to teach Mabo his rich …show more content…

It is an account of the lasting effect the entire story of Sundiata had on Mabo’ s personality. Following the mysterious disappearance of Griot Kouyaté, the disorientated Mabo who goes in search of him, bumps into the hunter who had appeared at decisive moments in the course of the film’s narrative, and he asks him to answer the unanswered question – the meaning of his name. This episode helps establish the fact that the result of Mabo’s contact with the griot has paid off: he gets absorbed in a kind of mythical thinking and invokes the protection of the bird flying right up in the

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