Amos Tutuola and the standards for judging folktales

Amos Tutuola is a Nigerian writer whose work gained international recognition. Some critics admire the fresh way he combines English, Nigerian expressions, and translations from Yoruba. Others complain that he retells familiar stories while taking liberties with their details. So far, we've heard two reactions to his work. We haven't yet heard which view our author supports.

My first reaction to the complaint is: why is retelling a familiar story necessarily bad? Think of someone putting a new spin on The Tortoise and the Hare. The basic story isn't theirs, but they might still do something interesting with it. Whether that's a fair defense will depend on what Tutuola is trying to do.

The end of the first paragraph points us in that direction. Critics have too readily assumed that he writes novels. Even if “facilely” is unfamiliar, the surrounding sentence makes the objection clear: before judging his work, we need to put it in the right category. The author thinks the critics have jumped ahead of that question.

Then we get a dense sentence about criteria and assumptions. Put simply, treating these works as novels judges them by expectations they weren't designed to meet. Tutuola is a teller of folktales. The author even grants the critics' point that his subjects aren't strikingly original. The response is that this isn't the right reason to fault him. A novelist is expected to create original material; a folktale teller is expected to draw on existing stories.

That distinction helps. We don't have to pretend the stories are completely new to defend his work. We need to understand what counts as doing this kind of storytelling well.

The third paragraph explains that standard. A familiar folktale belongs to a shared cultural tradition, and listeners usually know its basic plot. They come for the teller's improvisation and delivery. Imagine adapting The Tortoise and the Hare to LSAT preparation: one student rushes into the test, while another works steadily until ready. The underlying story is recognizable, but the teller has given it a different setting and application. That's the kind of creative freedom being described, not a requirement to repeat every detail exactly.

Now the two complaints from the opening look different. Borrowing a familiar plot is expected, and modifying it can be the point. There is still room for creativity; it appears in how the teller reshapes and delivers the material rather than in inventing the entire story from scratch.

The final paragraph connects that account to Tutuola's actual writing. He repeats episodes for emphasis, adds personal interpretations, and moves familiar stories into modern settings. His language gives the stories a distinctive form. He also uses a summarizing voice at the end, a recognizable folktale technique. These aren't just interesting facts about his style. They provide evidence that the folktale tradition is the right framework for understanding him.

So the central argument is a change in how we judge Tutuola. The author isn't simply announcing that he's famous or that folktales are valuable. We're being shown why evaluating his work as inventive folktale telling makes more sense than measuring it against expectations for novels.