The Study of the Heroine’s Quest for Wholeness in Leo Frobenius’s Selected Translated Kabyle Folktales, Le Monstrueux

Terki, Nassima; Naar Gada, Nadia

Aleph
Volume 11, Numéro 7, Pages 359-378
2024-12-15

The Study Of The Heroine’s Quest For Wholeness In Leo Frobenius’s Selected Translated Kabyle Folktales, Le Monstrueux

Authors : Terki Nassima . Naar Gada Nadia .

Abstract

The present paper investigates the female heroine’s journey in selected Kabyle folktales, which were collected by the German ethnographer, Leo Frobenius, and translated into French by Fetta Mokran. Frobenius studied artifacts across the African continent, working lengthily with particular interest in Berber mythology. His research covers a rich and diverse collection of volumes, describing beliefs and folklore across North Africa with its variety of fascinating oral stories, which have been passed down orally through generations. In so doing, he contributed in preserving the Kabyle culture with its valuable insights, verbal arts, its beliefs, traditions, and values. Our study concentrates on the second volume of his Les Contes Kabyles, entitled Le Montrueux. The objective is to examine the female heroine’s move beyond the chaos of the social constraints imposed by matriarchy to challenge and tame the beast. The beast, then, stands as a pretext, behind leaving the domestic and a way to achieve wholeness. Our analysis will be based on the theoretical thoughts, provided in Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey: Women’s Quest for Wholeness (1990) and Jordan B. Peterson’s perception of the heroine’s journey through his work in Maps of Meaning (1999), Beyond Order (2018). Both authors use a Jungian perspective to look at the heroine’s journey as a process of wholeness. Some of their ideas will be appropriated and applied to our study of the myth of the beauty and the beast, which finds resonance in the Kabyle oral heritage.